New cd “Orion”
My last cd “Orion” was the winner of the Just Plain Folks 2009 music awards @ “world music” category.
Just Plain Folks is a community of over 51,500 Songwriters, Recording Artists and Music Industry Professionals — and host to the world’s largest independent music awards. The organization was created to provide a network of cooporation and inclusion for musicians.
The Just Plain Folks Music Awards were started in 1999 as a simple way to recognize the best music submitted by members.
“JPF” Founder Brian Austin Whitney felt the music made by the “other 98%” of the music world often ignored by the mainstream televised music awards shows deserved its own recognition. 
The judging criteria are based around one basic concept: Does the music move you? This one encompassing criteria has since been adopted across much of the mainstream music industry to measure the very best quality of the best music being made today. Just Plain Folks starts it’s quest to find the music that moves us most and recognize it with admiration, fairness and dignity (and a cool JPF Awards trophy)…
ΤMy last cd “Orion”, was selected in the top 10 albums of 2009 from the British music magazine “Songlines” (www.songlines.co.uk). As mentioned on it’s official webpage “Songlines is the magazine that looks at the world through its music. Covering music from traditional and popular to contemporary and fusion, Songlines features artists from all around the globe: from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe; from Miriam Makeba to Mariza; from Gilberto Gil to Gogol Bordello and from Bjork to Buena Vista Social Club. Discover the traditional instruments of the world: the sitar, the kora, the talking drum and beyond.
Edited by Simon Broughton, co-editor of “The Rough Guide to World Music”, Songlines is packed full of the latest CD reviews, artist interviews, guides to particular world music traditions, travel adventures, beginner’s and city guides, frontline reports and concert listings.”
Here is the complete review of Orion cd:
“Of all the artists in this list it’s perhaps Stelios Petrakis that will be least familiar to a world music audience. He is one of a new generation of Cretan lyra players hopefully raising the profile of this little known instrument – a pear shaped fiddle occupying the fertile middle ground between the Mediterranean and the Middle East. I had the good fortune to meet him at Ross Daly’s Labyrinth Workshop in Crete last year, an environment where the poignant expressive qualities of the instrument where displayed in abundance. This is a disc of Cretan lyra that totally works for an international audience with exquisite playing, a variety of textures and strong vocal numbers.”
