NEWS

Featured in this weeks

22/02/2007—New Horizons out of Kastelli Kissamos Chania. On newstands now. If you are able, please pick up a copy.

AUDIO

Biography

Born on 18-9-1972 in Australia, where his parents had immigrated from the village Lousakies of Kissamos in Chania. Later they continued their journey to the United States of America, where they lived for many years. He started playing the laouto at the age of seven, since he came from a family of musicians. His grandfather, Stelios Hartzoulakis, played the violin, and his grandmother, Eleni Hartzoulakis, played the laouto. His grandmother, who was in America at the time to raise him and his sister Georgia, as their parents were working at their family business, helped him in his first steps with the instrument. As he learned the laouto he was greatly inspired and influenced by Cretan musicians who visited America and were put up by his family. At the age of fifteen he and his family moved back to Greece, where he still resides, and expanded his musical abilities.

His career in instrument making started as a result of his artistry, when, in 1995 at the age of twenty-three, he constructed his first laouto with very few tools and machinery. Self-taught, he continues with repairs of old instruments. Gradually, he obtains his first pieces of machinery and continues to create high-quality instruments, many of which are owned and played by professional Cretan musicians, and which one can see and hear at many musical events. He studied the practice of instrument making and the performance of the different types of wood and other materials used in the construction of musical instruments from the bibliography of world famous instrument makers, so as to attain the best possible acoustic and aesthetic result. The knowledge he aquired from studying, in combination with his own practical knowledge and experience, has resulted in the unique timbre which characterizes his instruments. All his instruments are hand-made, and even the slightest detail is meticulously examined at each stage of production, starting from the selection of the best wood for each part of the instrument, to the final finishing touch. Thus, the greatest possible acoustic and visual result is ensured, as well as the endurance of the musical instrument through rough usage and time.