Funk

TisF Spends Five Fabulous Minutes with Elli Kokkinou!

International signing sensation, Elli Kokkinou grew up in a family with a love of music. From a young age, Elli showed interest in music, and was also part of the dance group at her school. Her father encouraged her to listen to music, mostly Jazz, while her mother encouraged her to listen to more modern music, such as disco. At age 5, she started ballet, while at home she sang and danced for her parents at night. She soon began courses for classic guitar at the "Attiko Conservatory", and after that, acoustic and electric guitar lessons for another three years. Elli was also very interested in sports, and for six years before she finished school, she was on a water ski team. On the team, she won third place in a Pan-Hellenic championship as well as many gold medals. When she finished school, Elli started her first band called "Anonimi" (Anonymous). At the same time, she completed her examinations and was accepted to the "Vakalo" school where she studied drawing and art history.

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TisF Spends Five Fabulous Minutes with Chihsuan Yang.

Chihsuan Yang began playing the violin at the age of four in her native country, Taiwan. As a versatile musician she performs a broad range of music including contemporary classical, experimental, world, free-improvisation, electro-acoustic, ambient, hip-hop and rock.

Collaborative creation is an integral part of her work, which has led to various projects with composers, dance, theater and visual artists. She has toured throughout the U.S., Taiwan, Australia, Canada, and Mexico.

As an active freelance musician in Chicago, Chihsuan also plays piano, electric violin, erhu (a Chinese fiddle) and Okinawa Sanshin (a Japanese stringed instrument).  She is a founding member of the Accende Ensemble, a classical quintet; she is a member of New Millennium Orchestra of Chicago and plays with blues harmonica/piano virtuoso Corky Siegel in his band Chamber Blues.

She has participated in music festivals such as the SLSQ Chamber Music Seminar at Stanford University, Colorado College Chamber Music Festival, Festival de Musica de Camara, Feria de las Artes Sinaloa of Mexico.

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TisF Dances to the Sounds of Dalida.

Under her real name of Yolanda Gigliotti, Dalida was born in Cairo on 17th January 1933.  She came from an Italian family which had emigrated to Egypt, and was the only daughter between two sons, Orlando her elder brother and Bruno, her younger. Their father Pietro, was the Principal Violinist for the Cairo Opera.  In her teenage years, she was destined to follow a career as a secretary. In 1951, she secretly entered a beauty pageant. Three years later, she took part in the Miss Egypt contest and won first prize. She was then hired as an actress to make films in Cairo, the Hollywood of the Middle East. There she was spotted by a French film producer. Yolanda, who had become Dalila, dreamt of Paris. Despite her family's misgivings, on 24th December 1954, she caught a flight to Paris. Times were hard. French cinema had no place for her. So in order to make ends meet, she took singing lessons.

She was booked for a cabaret on the Champs Elysées, and later on at the Villa d'Este. She was introduced as the "Revelation of French Song".  Bruno Coquatrix had just bought an old Parisian cinema, the "Olympia", where he put on a variety show, "The Number Ones of Tomorrow". Dalila was invited and she chose to perform "Stranger in Paradise". On that occasion, she met two men: Lucien Morisse, Artistic Director of Radio Europe 1, and Eddy Barclay, a record producer. They had decided to discover the pearl that would help them launch both their respective businesses. Dalila, now having become DALIDA, seemed to be the artiste they needed.  She recorded her first single on the Barclay label, "Madonna", but it was with "Bambino" that Dalida would make her mark. It was an enormous success.

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TisF is Spinning Over Kapa Music!

Christos Kedras was born and grew up in Greece next to the majestic waters of the Aegean Sea, an environment that helped him develop a natural sense for the elegant & graceful. Having travelled a lot from a young age, he adopted a cosmopolitan lifestyle and lived in numerous cities including Amsterdam, Athens, London, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. He was immediately attracted to the soulful qualities of early house music and found his genre in the European dance-lounges of the mid/late 90s - places like Amsterdam's Supper Club, London's Voodoo Lounge and Paris' Barfly, where dancing, euro-chic sophistication, and style seemed to co-exist effortlessly.

Moving to Los Angeles he quickly gained acclaim for his sophisticated DJ sets full of bossa nova, afro-latin, nu jazz, and house. Christos established a number of DJ/music night, DJing alongside Jay-J, Claude Monnet, John Beltran, Random Soul, Raul Campos, Q-Burns, Graham Sahara, and for the likes of Sting, the Coalition of LA Designers, the Kabbalah, Create:Fixate, and numerous events.

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