Biography
Odysseas Manidakis
(born 7.8.1993 in Athens, Greece) is a composer and musician currently based in Linz, Austria. He studied composition BA at the Ionian university in Corfu with Dimitra Tripani and Joseph Papadatos and MA at the Anton Bruckner Private university in Linz with Erland Maria Freudenthaler and Christoph Cech.
As a multi-instrumentalist (guitar, bouzouki, greek lute, piano/synth, vocals) he engages himself in various different bands and projects in Greece and Austria ranging from contemporary jazz to indie rock. The roots of his musical development lie in traditional music of the Eastern Mediterranean area, especially Greece, the genius improvisations of Keith Jarrett and the inevitable impact of the Beatles during his childhood years. His artistic visions encompass mostly a combination of different art forms and expressive media. The ecstatic and impulsive elements in jazz and world music traditions as well as the innovative and conceptual ideas in contemporary classical music, have shaped the aesthetic character of his compositions. Seemingly irrelevant musical styles provide him with a creative potential, which eventually contributes in bridging the gap between score and music, meticulous composition and spontaneous improvisation. Right at the core of his artistic activity lies the belief that music is universal. A mindset, which allows all the different sound stimuli of our modern hectic world to infiltrate his compositional work and feeds his aspiration to convey all these different influences in a coherent and authentic context on stage.
