Born: December 28, 1970 Primary Instrument: Sax, alto
Dimitris Tsakas was born in Greece He started playing music at the age of eight studied classical guitar and music theory. In 1989 he got his degree in classical guitar. In 1991 he started playing the alto saxophone, and after two years he received a scholarship from BERKLEE COLLEGE OF MUSIC, where he studied from 1994 to 1995 jazz saxophone under the guidance of Andy Mc Ghee, George Garzone and Jerry Bergonzy. Upon his return to Greece he performed as a saxophone player with a lot of top Greek jazz artists like George Kontrafouris, Takis Paterelis, George Fakanas e.t.c. He was a member for one year of Iasis, a well known ethnic jazz group in Greece and Europe. He recorded with George Polyhronakos Blink, and Takis Paterelis group Let the Blues Talk in Legend music company. From 1999 he started visiting New York City area where he met and played with a lot of well known American and international jazz players. He wrote music for the Greek film Eonios Fititis by Vaggelis Seitanidis. He joined the world famous singers Eleftheria Arvanitaki and Maria Farantouri. He also played with other two very famous Greek singers: Alkisti Protopsalti and Dimitra Galani in the Greek biggest concert hall Athens music Megaron where they recorded their performances. He played in the closing ceremony for the 2004 olympic games in Athens Currently, Dimitris is living in Athens, teaching jazz saxophone and arranging in Nakas music school , gigging with his jazz group. He is working as a session recording musician and arranger ,gigging also with the most famous Greek singers. He finished his first personal project Growing Up which merges elements of jazz, Greek melodies and classical music, and recorded in New York City at Systems Two recording studios in Brooklyn with a Greek piano player Eleftherios Kordis, an American bass player Dylan Spielvogel, an Irish drummer David Mason featuring Irina Vallentinova from Moscow in vocals. He visited Boston where he performed and presented his own music project with pianist Eleftherios Kordis, bassist Jorge Roeder and drummer Richie Barshay. He is also featured saxophone player on the 25th anniversary edition of the Blade Runner soundtrack by composer Vangelis Papathanasiou . David Liebman said about this project : “ Dimitris has a beautiful sound on alto, a smooth approach and a lot of lyricicm . The material is very good”.
