#theodorakis

Farewell Mikis Theodorakis

Mikīs Theodōrakīs Μίκης" Θεοδωράκης

Photo by Athensville - athensville.blogspot.com

Αντίο, τελευταίε των Όρθιων.

Just learned that the composer Mikis Theodorakis died. I don't know his Greek music but I am familiar with and own his soundtracks. He was first impronised, then expelled from Greece when the military junta called the "Regime of the Colonels" took over and started to write film music - mainly for the French-Greek director Costa Gavras. And then there's Sidney Lumet who invited him to New York to write the score of "Serpico". (That's a must-see movie from the seventies.) (Forget "Zorba, the Greek", it's fluff for superficial tourists.)

Mr. Theodorakis was best known internationally for his scores for the films “Zorba the Greek” (1964), in which Anthony Quinn starred as an essence of tumultuous Greek ethnicity; “Z” (1969), Costa-Gavras’s dark satire on the Greek junta; and “Serpico” (1973), Sidney Lumet’s thriller starring Al Pacino as a New York City cop who goes undercover to expose police corruption.