Maria Papageorgiou

Maria Papageorgiou grew up in Grevena, a town in Western Macedonia, and in interviews she has described a childhood in the provinces. Her year of birth is not given in the sources used for this page. Like her siblings, she studied economics, but she never worked in that field; her voice teacher was Elisavet Karatzoi. In Athens she began in small music venues and tavernas. The songwriter Alexandros Emmanouilidis was the first to write songs for her, and their work together brought her to the attention of the city's music scene. Critics nicknamed her the girl with the red guitar.

For four consecutive years she gave Monday concerts at the Athens club Σταυρός του Νότου (Stavros tou Notou). She has also released a live album, 4 Χρόνια Δευτέρα (4 Years of Mondays). For about fifteen years she also took part in the children's theatre group Κοπέρνικος (Kopernikos), and she has performed with Quasi Stellar, the dance theatre company of the choreographer Apostolia Papadamaki. She produced the programme Τα τραγούδια των άλλων (Other People's Songs) on the Second Programme of Greek public radio, and she teaches voice to professionals, refugees and anyone who wants to explore their own voice.

Her first book, Μια χαραμάδα πανικού (A Crack of Panic, 2016), is a personal account of panic attacks and has been reprinted several times. In 2025 the publisher Patakis issued her first literary book, Το γάβγισμα (The Barking).

Her first album, Όμορφοι και ηττημένοι (Beautiful and Defeated, around 2010), was made with Alexandros Emmanouilidis, who wrote most of the songs; the two shared the arrangements and production. Further personal albums followed, among them Άβουλο θεριό (Will-less Beast), 3 Μοίρες (3 Fates) and Μνήμη (Memory). In recent concerts she accompanies herself on guitar and piano and builds songs live with loops and effects.

The turning point was Αλληλογραφία (Correspondence). Mikis Theodorakis suggested that she record a second reading of ten of his songs, and the album first appeared with the newspaper Η Εφημερίδα των Συντακτών at Easter 2018, later followed by a vinyl edition. In a 2019 interview she said that she and the composer had become friends and listened to records together at his home. In summer 2025 she presented the project in China.

In 2022 she returned with Ο τελευταίος αναλογικός έρωτας (The Last Analogue Love): six new songs by Emmanouilidis, Stavros Roumeliotis, Panagiotis Manouilidis, Michalis Gelasakis and herself, one of them a setting of a poem by Napoleon Lapathiotis, with recited poems by Nikos Karouzos and Christos Boulotis in between. In November 2023 her tribute to Thanos Mikroutsikos, 17 ταπεινά ρέκβιεμ για το μέλλον (17 Humble Requiems for the Future), sold out the Olympia Theatre in Athens. She has also written music for short films, the theatre and a video game.

Papageorgiou belongs to a generation of Greek singers who keep the classic song repertoire alive by reinterpreting it: Theodorakis, Mikroutsikos and the poets they set to music reach new listeners through her concerts. She also passes on what she has learned. Her voice workshop Φτου ξελευθερία (named after the call children shout in hide-and-seek) forms singing groups in different parts of Greece every year, and in 2023 she sang at Delphi.

A task for you: choose one Theodorakis song from Αλληλογραφία and listen to it next to an older official recording of the same song. Without copying any lyrics, write three Greek sentences about what you hear, for example Εδώ τραγουδά πιο αργά (Here she sings more slowly) or Η κιθάρα ακούγεται πιο ήσυχα (The guitar sounds quieter).

• Theodorakis encouraged her to keep going with the words Μαρία, δεν θέλω να φοβάσαι (Maria, I don't want you to be afraid), as she recalled in 2019.
• A published profile of her says that music she wrote for short films won an award for original music at the Cannes festival.
• She re-orchestrated Christos Christodoulou's piece Coalescence Returns for the video game Risk of Rain.
• In 2026 she talked about the voice and interpretation in the series Τραγούδια από τον Τρίτο Όροφο (Songs from the Third Floor) at the Maria Callas Museum in Athens.