Spyros Manesis

Jazz pianist Spyros Manesis is born in Athens, Greece on 1978. His studies include degrees on classical and jazz piano at Athenaeum Conservatory (Athens, Greece, with M. Aivazova, G. Kontrafouris, S. Syrros) and Bachelor and a Master's degree on jazz piano from prestigious Conservatory of Amsterdam (K. Boehlee, H. Vroomans, K. Goessens, R. v. Bavel and H.Fraanje) and a Musicology degree from the University of Athens.

On 2008 he made his first album as a co-leader with project TRIOISM (ANKh JAZZ). On 2011 he released “Undelivered” (JACC Records) with almost exclusively original compositions and arrangements for piano trio with Joao Hasselberg on double bass and Kaspars Kurdeko on drums. He has recorded his own arrangements for solo piano of songs of Lena Platonos’s which was his subject on his master research and was presented with huge success on 2012 at Michael Cacoyannis Foundation. He has been a member of Chronos Project along with Dimitra Galani, Christos Rafalides, Thomas Konstantinou and Petros Klampanis. On 2016 he released “First Takes” (Unit Records), a duo album with original compositions by him and saxophonist Christine Corvisier. On 2017 he released "Spiral Trio" (with Arionas Gyftakis and Anastasis Gouliaris) and on 2018 he released "Well excuse me" with his project TFATFY (Minas Liakos, Stelios Provis and Serafeim Gianakopoulos). On 2022 he released “Broken Blue” with Spiral Trio (Odradek Records).

Among his collaborations are very important names of the greek and international music scene, such as Dean Bowman, Olivier Gatto, Gilad Hekselman, JD Walter, Marc Abrams, Bodek Janke, Max Pollak, Heather Cornell, Jaques Morelenbaum, Paula Morelenbaum, Joana Espadinha, Pablo Reyes, Christine Corvisier, Dimitra Galani, Savina Yannatou, Christos Rafalides, Dimos Dimitriadis, Petros Klampanis, Andreas Polyzogopoulos, Arionas Gyftakis, Anastasis Gouliaris and many more, and has performed in many countries including Cyprus, Greece, Holland, France, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Latvia, Lithuania, United States, Colombia and China. He has also collaborated with Orquestra do Norte (Portugal), Greek Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Municipal Symphony Orchestras of Athens and Thessaloniki. On 2015 he was awarded with the 1st prize in the 1st Greek jazz competition for jazz ensembles, “Apollon”, with his project Spiral Trio (Spyros Manesis, Arionas Gyftakis, Anastasis Gouliaris)

Spyros Manesis teaches regularly jazz piano at Jazzart music school, has taught jazz piano at Athenaeum and Musical Praxis music schools, has served as guest teacher at Ionian University (2010-11) and has organized and guided a four-day jazz piano workshop commissioned by Greek National Opera (2018).

Awards

On 2015 he was awarded with the 1st prize in the 1st Greek jazz competition for jazz ensembles, “Apollon”, with his project Spiral Trio (Spyros Manesis, Arionas Gyftakis, Anastasis Gouliaris)

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