Kostadinos / History
About
Kostadinos is a talented musician with an allmost rare sensibility. Multi-instrumentalist, plays as well guitar (his principal instrument), as keyboards, drums and bass. He is also an acomplished composer, writer and arranger who jumps easily from modern styles of music (rock, rythm and blues, jazz-rock …), to Greek folklore and to classical or oriental.
Always interested about technical evolutions, concerning recording and computing, he became an expert to the art of recording and producing music and that gave him the opportunity to release albums from A to Z. That means from composition, performance and recording, until mixing and mastering.
What they said about him...
- << Kostadinos is a musicians’ guitar player, but his exceptional talent, can make him be appreciated, by everyone who has the taste of good music. >> Ian Taylor King (Prestige Records)
- << When you’re listening to him on the piano with Nana (Mouskouri), you can’t imagine, not even for a second, that he can be as well, the amazing guitarist he is. >> Dave Grusin (pianist-composer-producer) New York – Carnegie Hall 1985
- << Except Vangelis (Papathanassiou), Costas is one of those few rare musicians, that they have really impressed me.>> Robert Seto (producer-manager / Aphrodite’s Child, Demis Roussos, Ypsilon etc.)
- << Everything he does, he does it well and with an exceptional musicianship. He’s also somebody, that you can always count on. >> Nana Mouskouri (International famous Greek artist)
Influences
Elvis Presley and later the Beatles, are mainly the artists that gave Costas the desire to follow the music path, in his life. At the age of nine, he knew already by heart, the lyrics of Elvis’ “Viva Las Vegas” and as soon as he got twelve years old and bought his first guitar, he started to venture himself in the harmonies of “And I Love Her” and others like “Yesterday” e.t.c.
His natural facility of learning how to play an instrument, pushed him with the arrival of groups like The Animals or later The Iron Butterfly, Procol Harum & Deep Purple to play the electronic organ and then the piano. But in 1971, when Emerson,Lake & Palmer came out with the legendary Mini-Moog, that signed a new era. The era of the synthesizer.
But at the same time there were Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Wilson Pickett and all the others of the soul music. And don’t forget groups like the Blood, Sweat & Tears and the Chicago who brought us a revolutionary rock by adding horn-section and a dose of jazz.
Costas loves as well good voices and beautiful songs. So it was impossible for him to resist the magic of Stevie Winwood, Rod Stewart, Joe Cocker, Stevie Wonder, Gino Vannelli, James Ingram, Michael McDonald, Richard Page and so many more. And as he had always hated to be one-track-minded, even by the times that he was twenty and rock was a kind of king in music, he still continues to appreciate good music, wherever it comes from.
Here below, you can find in chronological order, a list of the guitar players that have influenced Costas, during all these years and guided him, to develop his own way of playing the guitar.
George Harrison : (The Beatles)
Eric Clapton : (The Cream, Blind Faith)
Jeff Beck : (Jeff Beck Group, Beck-Bogart & Appice)
Jimmy Page : (Led Zeppelin)
Jimmy Hendrix : (Experience, Band of Gypsies)
Leslie West : (Mountain, West-Bruce & Laing)
Rory Gallagher : (Taste & solo)
Ritchie Blackmore : (Deep Purple, Rainbow)
Carlos Santana : (Santana)
Alan Holdsworth : (Tempest & solo)
Wess Montgomery : (solo)
George Benson : (solo)
Jay Graydon : (Al Jarreau, Gino Vannelli)
Larry Carlton : (Steely Dan, Four play & solo)
Lee Ritenour : (Four Play & solo)
Steve Lukather : (Toto)
Biography
The early years in Athens, Greece
Constantin (Costas) Dourountzis alias Kostadinos, has been born on the 16 of August in Athens, (Greece) and started to play the guitar, at the age of twelve.Two years later he started to play also keyboards, participating to a number of groups of modern music. At the age of sixteen, he’s got his first job with a professional band, in a night-club called “La Bambola” in Athens. The band’s name was “The Warm Company” and the next year became “Milly & The Rivers”.
Milly quits the band for a solo carrier, as well as the drummer Costas Karamitros, who joins the band of the singer Dionyssios Savvopoulos. Constantin then forms a new band, with the other two members of The Warm Company, Antonis Bissarakis (guitar) et Costas Koumpouras (bass) plus Giorgos Trantalidis on the drums, (who played later with Socrates, Mariza Koch, Markopoulos . . .) and the vocalist Nikos Charitos.
The new band is called “Sette Amici” because Nikos Charitos owns the name and performs for a season, in the athenian night-club “Whisky a go-go”. Costas Dourountzis enters the National Conservatory of Athens and after the end of the “Sette Amici”, forms his own rock-band, with the name of “NOE” at the age of 19, with Costas Koumpouras on bass and a Makis Palios on the drums.
The 70’s with “NOE” & recording sessions
On September 1972, “NOE” is: Costas Dourountzis (guitar and vocal), Lakis Makrakis (bass) and Vangelis Zissis (drums). They start playing at the night-club “Rodéo” with the ABBA-like band “Nostradamos” (winners of the Salonica Song Festival ’72) and Robert Williams (ex-POLL). In only a few months, with concerts and several TV appearences, “NOE” becomes very popular in Greece, by playing original compositions of Costas and some Led Zeppelin cover songs.
In 1973 Vangelis Zissis (drums), moves to France and he’s replaced by Andreas Mouzakis, a young seventeen year old drummer with an exceptional dexterity. The band receives in 1974 the TV-Award of the “Best Rock-Band of The Year” and signs a discographical contract with Philips (Phonogram). The same year, Andreas Mouzakis (drums) moves to the USA with his family and “NOE” makes a small break. Costas then, joins the group “FIRST” for a tour around Greece, beside the succesfull singer Pascalis. So, he finds himself at the Rhodes island with this same band, during the events of the Chyprus’ invasion by the Turkish army. That summer marks the end of the military dictature in Greece and the return of democracy.
Costas does some solo participations to TV shows and in the automne of 1974 with the return of Vangelis Zissis (drums) from Paris, the group “NOE” starts a new era, with Lambros Tselentis (bass) and the excellent Costas Michaelides (piano). The band recorded a last single on the Philips label, with two new compositions by Costas “Ilios Anatellei” et “Kathomai Pali Apopse”. From 1972 to 1975, Costas Dourountzis in parallel of his own group “NOE” participates like a session guitarist in studio, on many recordings with a lot of other artists like Pascalis, Elpida, Robert Williams, Costas Karalis, as well as with famous composers like Yiannis Spanos, Mimis Plessas and lots of others.
On September ’75, a magic concert at the Palais des Sports of Thessalonique, marks the end of the group and the Greek part of Costas’ life. On this unforgettable evening, “NOE” performs in the first part of the show and then backups the artists that participated to the Rock Opera “ILIAS” (after Homer). (Costas had already played all the guitar parts in the studio, on the album with the same name).
Moving to Paris, France
Three days later, on Septembre 15 in 1975, Costas quits Greece and family and flies to Paris (France) with Vangelis Zissis (drums) for a new chance and enters the International Conservatory of Music for classical guitar lessons. He participates in studio recording sessions and joins the band “YPSILON” with Lucas Sideras ex-drummer of the “Aphrodite’s Child” and Lakis Vlavianos (keyboards) main composer of Demis Roussos. At the same time, to make a living, he starts working in the Greek restaurants of Paris. Some tries to reform “NOE” with the arrival to France in 1977 of Costas Michaelides (piano), didn’t give any good results.
In 1978 Costas meets Jo Pucheu (percussionist), through Robert Seto ex-manager of the “Aphrodite’s Child” and Demis Roussos on his solo carrier, who became a really precious friend. Around Christmas 1980, Costas joins Jo Pucheu, to the Nana Mouskouri backup band and works with her during eight years. He played drums the first year with her and then he became her musical director. By the way, there is a double album live at the Olympia, in December 1981 (“D’ici et d’ailleurs”) on which Costas plays the drums. Costas also signs then the arrangements of the Greek album “Athina” and those of the famous live concert, in the antique theater of Herodus Atticus in Athens (1984).
In 1986 Jo Pucheu quits the band of Nana Mouskouri to create in Paris, his own publishing and producing company P.S.I. Promo Sonor International. The uncalculated tours of Nana Mouskouri through out the world, will bring Costas to perform, in mythical places like the Royal Albert Hall (London), the Opéra House of Sydney, the Carnegie Hall and the Radio-City Hall of New York and many others. During these years, he created a home-studio, very competitive and started to produce albums, of artists who are friends at the same time like, Tony Stefanidis and Rosy Armen among others.
From 1989 until now...
At the end of the year 1988, Costas quits Nana Mouskouri and continues working at the Greek restaurants of Paris, besides of composing and producing music in his home-studio, very often as well in collaboration with P.S.I. Records of his friend Jo Pucheu. Dear friend Jo Pucheu passed away in 2005 and Costas lost the best friend he ever had in France as he use to say.
In 2010 Costas created, un independent label by the name of “Melody’s Music Records” and still keeps producing music under his own name “Constantin Dourountzis”, for Greek music and under the name of “Kostadinos”, for rock, fusion etc. Lately in 2013 he created a virtual 3D artist by the name of “B-Bot: The Little Robot” and made two singles of electronic dance music.
