Canto Coro is a Brunswick based community choir and were formed in 1993 to perform high quality and inspirational choral music that passionately expresses a desire for liberation from oppression and inequality as well as social justice concerns. The choir is unique among community choirs in that it commissions new Australian works and performs Greek and Latin American choral classics, and who regularly work with professional local directors, soloists and musicians

Music Director - Peter Mousaferiadis
Assistant Music Director - Tanya Heine
Soloists - Aphrodite Simopoulos in "Snow In Brunswick"
Stavrina Koutsantonis in Romiossini
Jack Papadopoulos - bouzouki

Canto Coro
First Half - Romiossini - poetry by Yannis Ritsos music by Miki Theodorakis
Notes
Romiossini: The nine songs of the cycle Romiossini are settings of sections of a much longer poem in which Ritsos (one of 20th Century's most prolific poets) attempts to crystallise the events of recent Greek history into a modern epic. Ritsos' central theme is resistance - Romiossini, the independent Greek spirit, from the time of Digenis Akritas, through the Klephts and the War of lndependance to the resistance fighters of World War ll and the Civil War. The universality of Ritsos poetry is complimented with the monumental simplicity of Theodorakis' music which has become his most popular work with the Greek public.

Second Half - Snow In Brunswick - poetry by George Veis music Peter Mousaferiadis
The second work is SNOW IN BRUNSWICK by Peter Mousaferiadis and Yorgos Veis composed in 1997. Through its catchy melodies and confronting imagery, SNOW captures the chaotic thoughts of a drug-affected and home-sick newly arrived Greek migrant in Melbourne. The previous staging of this work resulted in much controversy within in the Greek communities of Melbourne with such pressure from the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese that it was as if Mousaferiadis' music was 'excommunicated', as he puts it, "We were told we could not perform such music".

View the Canto Coro website