Born and raised in Athens, Magda Giannikou is a versatile artist – singer, pianist, accordionist, composer and producer. A graduate in Film Music at Berklee College of Music, Boston, and winner of several film scoring awards, after her studies she moves to New York, the famously electrifying environment where she engages with the contemporary jazz scene and where the project Banda Magda takes off.
Banda Magda currently unites an Argentinian rising star who has created quite a buzz with his melodic approach to bass (Andres Rotmistrovsky), a Nagasaki-born percussionist with contemporary classical cred (Keita Ogawa), an Argentinean jazz guitarist (Ignacio Hernandez), a hand drummer with every South American rhythm at his fingertips (Marcelo Woloski)' with a musician who is equally expressive on trumpet and keyboards and keen on exploring new musical directions (Justin Stanton of Snarky Puppy), all led by the sweet-voiced Giannikou.
Her music is a melting-pot of cultures and sounds, with lyrics in five different languages.
Banda Magda effortlessly moves from samba to French chanson, from Greek dance rhythms to Colombian cumbia and Afro-Peruvian lando.
Two albums published, Amour t’es là? and Yerakina, and a forthcoming third, Tigre.
” This album is about Courage and Fearlessness. The tiger mask that appears on the cover represents our fears all together. You take it off and reveal your own self. How? Through music, friendship, risking. ”
Live, Banda Magda bursts with humor and quirky sensibility, powered by a unflagging energy. They play their wonderfully addictive arrangements with dynamic finesse. Between the musicians there is a magnetic interplay, a party on the stage. The stage itself is merely a barrier between the artists and the audience, - Magda manages to break through it effortlessly: ” I left Greece, I left a family and made a new one. In my homeland people talk about their feelings, they express themselves a lot and they talk loud. I find those features in me: when I am on stage they make me connect more with the audie