Photo: Nassim Eloud

 

Eleni and Eugenia Kanthou have sung and played music together since their childhood. In the 1980s, during their music studies in Vienna, they founded the duo Guitar and Voice, which surprised audiences, but nonetheless was enthusiastically received as something out of the ordinary run, for Lied and solo guitar. From then on, Guitar and Voice have toured throughout Europe, taking part in well-knowned festivals such as the Wiener Festwochen, the Carinthian Summer, the Forum Gitarre Wien, the Fest in Hellbrunn, in Salzburg, the J.K.Mertz Guitar Festival in Bratislava and the Zyprischer Frühling in Munich, and have made appearances in many radio and television broadcasts. Composers such as Cesar Bresgen and Ayis Ioannides composed works especially for the duo. The Austrian label Preiser records released a CD of the duo.

The ensemble repertoire includes, besides the original music for this genre, Songs from many centuries and a large number of folk songs from all over the world, adapted to the guitar; with an emphasis on the Arrangement of folk songs from celebrated composers such as Brahms, Britten, de Falla, Nin and Ravel, the accompaniments of which Eugenia Kanthou has adapted from the piano to the guitar. Solo guitar music plays a key role in the programmes of the duo.