Billy Chrissochos" A Porphyra Summer Concert 07-20-21

 

From last week’s rehearsal. Mr Ron Iglesias is back along with Jose Navia and Richard S Khuzami. Getting ready for our epic Astoria debut at Athens Square Park on Tuesday, July 20th at 7:00PM.

A glimpse from last week’s #Porphyra’s rehearsal. We are preparing our epic setlist for our return to Queens. In Athens Square Park on Tuesday July 20th at 7PM in #Astoria! Sponsored by #AHEPA Hermes Chapter 186, that our own Billy Chrissochos, is president. #AthensSquarePark

AHEPA Hermes Astoria Chapter 186 and the Athens Square Park Committee proudly present
“A Porphyra Greek Night” Outdoor Summer Concert!
On Tuesday, July 20th, 2021
7:00 PM

Athens Square Park, Astoria
30th Ave and 30th St
Free Admission - All Ages Show
Facebook event link:
https://fb.me/e/F3L2VFVU

About Porphyra -

Porphyra's Rock Opera, "Anna and Vladimir: The love that ROCKED" the world DEBUTED at Carnegie Hall and Off-Broadway at The Players Theatre. Porphyra has been awarded by UNESCO Piraeus, the Office of the Mayor of Moscow, and the Gorchakov Fund. Porphyra has garnered praise from Chinese and International Asian Press for its Flushing Town Hall Performance.

The productions are based on the band's two albums, "Faith, Struggle, Victory" and the "The Starmaker's Prophecy." A third album is currently in the works.

Porphyra is:
Elaine Turtle and Ron Iglesias - Vocals
Dorit - Featured Bellydancer and vocals
Billy Chrissochos - Guitar
Mike “Risko” Savvas - Guitar and Tzoura
Jose N. Navia - Bass
Richard Khuzami - Percussion
Tracey “Tre” Beavers - Drums

*The very talented and beautiful bellydancer and singer, Dorit, will be performing with Porphyra for the first time! Singing and dancing!

Please make sure you subscribe to #Porphyra https://youtube.com/user/PorphyraOfficial
On Facebook https://www.facebook.com/PorphyraBand/
Website: https://porphyraband.com
Or make a tax exempt donation to our non-profit here.
Website: http://porphyrafoundation.org/

Here is our Patreon page and sister sites.
https://www.patreon.com/HellenicHistorySeries
Hellenic History Series YouTube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/user/kalavrita1821
Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/HellenicHistorySeries
The Facebook community group Love Letters to Greece
https://www.facebook.com/groups/627895857390614

Billy Chrissochos site:
http://billychrissochos.com

Unesco Piraeus
https://www.unescopireas.gr

Athens Square Park
https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/athens-square

More on AHEPA’s mission:
https://ahepa.org 

https://www.facebook.com/events/402248704482612

Porphyra

A CONCERT OF PANAGIOTIS KAROUSOS AT THE MUNICIPAL THEATRE OF PIRAEUS

 CLUB FOR UNESCO OF PIRAEUS & ISLANDS

INTERNATIONAL ACTION ART

"Days of the Sea 2021" of the Municipality of Piraeus
“We are all one at music concert”
Tribute to the songs of the Mediterranean by Greek-Canadian composer
PANAGIOTIS KAROUSOS
September 21, 2021 at 8 pm
MUNICIPAL THEATRE OF PIRAEUS - Courtyard
Mr Ioannis Maronitis, President of the Club for UNESCO
of Piraeus & Islands and the INTERNATIONAL ACTION ART

Vocals: Erofili Tzanou, Elpida Metaxa, Theodoros Birakos, Georgina Antonakaki, Andreas Prionas. Musicians: Andreas Prionas (piano), Giannis Lambrakis (bouzouki), Andreas Niakaris (percussion).
Musical direction of the renown maestro Andreas Prionas

Poems Set to Music by composer Panagiotis Karousos: The Enchanted Fountain (Costas Krystallis), Remembrance (Dionysios Solomos), Approach (Yiannis Ritsos), Wayfarer (Paul Nirvana), Ode to Makriyanni (Angelos Sikelianos),
Tu sei come una terra (Cesare Paveze), No te amo (Pablo Nerouda), Love is life War and peace (Leon Tolstoy),
How much I love you (Yannis Vilaras), The child in the river (Georgios Vizyinos), Silence (Kostis Palamas),
Parthenon (Kostis Palamas), You the sweet (George Drosinis), Caryatids (Ioannis Polemis), Elevation (Nikiforos Vrettakos), In an old church (Miltiadis Malakasis), In the night club (Napoleon Lapathiotis), Learn the pain (Ioannis Gryparis), My world (Karl Marx), You will pull forward (Manolis Anagnostakis) Flowers of the cliff (Georgios Drosinis), Tomorrow Light (Alekos Panagoulis), Memory (Konstantinos Cavafy), Maid of Athens (Lord Byron)

Hellenic American Center of the Arts / Ελληνοαμερικανικό Κέντρο των Τεχνών

Δημοτικό Θέατρο Πειραιά

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2021 AT 8 PM UTC+03

https://www.facebook.com/events/357186945814185

St. Nicholas Church and National Shrine

 Surprises at St. Nicholas Church and National Shrine

My trip yesterday to check up on construction progress at the St. Nicholas Church and National Shrine was full of surprises. I was happy to see a delegation from the St. Nicholas Church Board taking a tour which included good friend and fellow Ahepan Brother Ted Klingos the President of my Chapter Delphi #25. It was also great to meet and speak with Paul one of the owners of Arc Electric performing the electrical work onsite. Paul as it turns out will be going to Hellas next week , heading to Kalamata, and as it turns out he will be on the same flight as I will be on next Friday out of New York. In a further small world category his nephew is engaged to the daughter of one of the major senior national leaders of AHEPA. It is this leader by his fine publicly proclaimed numerous statements about me last month in front of various past District Governors of AHEPA District 6 , members of the District 6 Lodge, and various Presidents of District 6 Chapters as well as members of his Chapter including Sons that encouraged me to run for AHEPA Supreme Vice President at the upcoming Supreme Family Convention in Athens. I was not in attendance at his Chapter meeting in New York but his fine words at that meeting on me were relayed by many AHEPA members in attendance.

Ilias I. Katsos

Moscho Tzavella

 Moscho Tzavella (1750 - 1804)

From Souli in Epirus, she was a fighter and a heroine in the late 18th century, during the years preceding the Greek Revolution of 1821.

Her husband Lambros Tzavellas, was the Captain of the Souliotes. After he was killed in 1792, she assumed the leadership and took over his responsibilities.

This culminated in a battle against the Turk-Albanians in Epirus later in 1792, where she commanded 400 Souliotes many of them women, against thousands of Turk-Albanians. Resulting in a decisive defeat of the Ottoman force, suffering 2000-3000 casualties.

Dying in 1804, many Greek folk songs and historical anecdotes have been written about Moscho Tzavella throughout the years.

Her grandson, Kyriakos “Kitsos” Tzavelas, would also be a Greek fighter during the Greek War of Independence, he was later a General in the Greek Army and was also Prime Minister of Greece. 

Hellenic Patriotism

Evangelos Fotiadis

 Evangelos Fotiadis (1892 - September 8, 1967)

Born in Herakleia in Paphlagonia, Asia Minor, he was a resistance fighter and Captain, during the period of the Greek Genocide (1914-1923) & Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922).

After refusing to enlist in the Turkish Army, he escaped and fled to the mountains, where he would eventually form a force made up of about 500 Greeks.

Evangelos Fotiadis fought ruthlessly and heroically against the Turkish soldiers, chetes, irregulars and bandits. Meanwhile, the Turks continued to go from village to village, all over Asia Minor and Anatolia. Raising them to the ground, orchestrating forced expulsions as well as killing, raping and kidnapping indiscriminately.

Fotiadis protected as many Greeks as he could. He led thousands in a convoy over the course of a week. During the journey, Fotiadis and his men were confronted by Turkish forces on horseback, who wrongly believed that Fotiadis’ group were unarmed, paying for this mistake quite severely.

Eventually, the group reached the town of Nikomideia, where with help from units of the Greek army, assisted the Greek refugees and ensured them safe passage to Greece.

It is estimated that Evangelos Fotiadis contribution during the period, was the rescuing of over 10,000 Greeks from certain death. He dies in Nea Nikomideia, Veria, Macedonia in 1967.

Hellenic Patriotism

Georgios Dilvois

 Georgios Dilvois (February 5, 1896 - July 18, 1918)

Born in Alatsata in Ionia, Asia Minor, George Dilboy as he was known in America, was a soldier who fought for Greece as well as a decorated soldier for the United States in the early 20th century.

In 1910, he emigrated to the US following his father, who had done so a couple of years earlier, settling in Somerville, Massachusetts.

At the outbreak of the Balkan Wars (1912-13), Dilvois rushed to Greece and volunteered to fight in the Greek Army, seeing action across Macedonia.

After returning to the US, at the outbreak of WW1 he again volunteered his services to the Greek military. While waiting for permission from the Greek Government, he stayed in Chios, where the rest of his family had fled to, during the persecution of the Greeks of Asia Minor / Anatolia (Greek Genocide 1914-23).

After a period of waiting in Chios, by 1916 he was back in America, where he enlisted in the US Army to fight in the Border War with Mexico. By 1917 he had arrived in France with the US 103rd infantry regiment during WW1. Georgios Dilvois fell heroically, dying on the 18th of July 1918. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the US’s highest & most prestigious personal military decoration.

At the request of his father, Dilvois was buried at his birthplace Alatsata, which in 1918 was still at that time a predominantly Greek city. After a funeral procession through the streets said to have been witnessed by 17,000 mourners his coffin was placed in the Greek Orthodox Church of Alatsata to lie in state before the high altar.

In 1922, Turks seized the town. The church was ransacked and Dilvois’ grave was desecrated, coffin overturned and his bones scattered by the marauding invaders.

US President Harding was outraged and sent a warship to recover the remains. Harding also demanded and received a formal apology from the Turkish government. Dilvois’ remains were transferred to the US and he was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery, where his gravestone proclaims his Medal of Honor status.

Monuments and stadiums carrying his name are in Massachusetts, while there are streets named after him in Athens.

Hellenic Patriotism

Lela Karagianni - Greek resistance leader during WW2

 

Lela Karagianni (June 24, 1898 - September 8, 1944)

Born in Euboea, she was a Greek resistance leader during WW2.

A wife and mother of 7 children during the Axis occupation of Greece, she helped organise resistance movements against the occupying Italians and Germans.

Karagianni, along with her husband and older sons joined the resistance movement of Napoleon Zervas, leader of the National Republican Greek League “Ethnikos Dimokratikos Ellinikos Syndesmos” (EDES), the most important and effective Greek resistance movement of the War.

Lela formed her own group within the wider movement, code-named "Bouboulina" in reference to Laskarina Bouboulina, a female Greek captain of the Greek Revolution in 1821.

Her group distributed information, smuggled wanted individuals into areas controlled by Greek forces, forged documents and coordinated with the British to disrupt the Axis occupation.

In July 1944, Karagianni was arrested in Athens by the German occupation forces. She was then tortured by the Nazis and then taken to the Haidari concentration camp on the outskirts of Athens.

Lela Karagianni was executed by firing squad on the morning of 8 September 1944, little more than a month before Germany’s retreat and evacuation of Athens. Her husband and children all survived the War.

A bust of Lela Karagianni is situated in central Athens and a plaque now stands outside the family’s home in Athens, which is a protected monument. 

Hellenic Patriotism

Apostolos Arsakis

 

Apostolos Arsakis (January 6, 1792 - July 16, 1874)

Born in Premeti in Northern Epirus, he was a politician and philanthropist of 19th century Greece.

Educated in Vienna at the Greek diaspora run school, he learned off one of the most important figures and scholars, Neophytos Doukas.

Apostolos Arsakis moved to Bucharest in Romania, where he became a prominent politician in that country. He was appointed Romanian Minister of Foreign affairs and even later spent a brief period as Romanian Prime Minister.

At the same time, Arsakis became one of the major benefactors of the 19th century and of the newly established Greek state. He personally offered large sums of money for the establishment of female educational institutions in Athens, initially to train young teachers and then send them to then Ottoman controlled Macedonia, in order to help continue the strong presence of the Greek language and culture.

Soon these schools became open to all students and the Arsakeio group of schools, grew to include several schools all over the Greek World, including in his home region of Northern Epirus. There are 2 in Athens, and campuses in Thessaloniki, Ioannina, Patra.

For these acts, the Greek Government awarded him honorary Greek citizenship.

Hellenic Patriotism HEROES/HISTORICAL FIGURES