Singer Katerina Papodopoulou is an authority on traditional music from Greece: she teaches at the University of Athens and regularly collaborates with the Catalan musician Jordi Savall. A still unfulfilled desire of Papodopoulou was to record music in a monastery somewhere on the Hellenic Arch - a geographical line that runs roughly from Cyprus, through western Turkey, Crete, to southern Greece.
With her group Notio Toxo she found a beautiful location on the island of Karpathos. The group arranged traditional songs from the aforementioned "arch" and also recorded them in the monastery. The musicians deliver a wonderful performance by transforming the material into hypnotic group arrangements with respect and personality. Once again it becomes clear how much the musical tradition of this region stands with one leg in the West and the other firmly in the Middle East. (JV)more
