Before the coronavirus entered our lives, Ellie Paspala successfully launched “Ellie Loves Jazz” performances. However, the pandemic has turned everything upside down. Now he’s back with an updated program, more songs and a willingness to tell stories full of passion, expectation, love, betrayal, desire, denial, joy and pain as they capture a series of jazz songs.

On Mondays until December 12, he appears at Alsos, on the Areos field, with the play “Ellie loves jazz – Tom. 2″ and other cities will follow. “It’s true that I couldn’t get enough of this tribute, and during the lockdown, I missed this musical idiom. I changed some parts, removed and added others.”

Jazz is predominantly the music of meeting and spontaneous self-expression. “Indeed, improvisation also plays a big role here. Of course, this is not my forte, but I enjoy being involved in this game and collaborating with musicians such as David Lynch, Takis Farazis, Petros Vartakouris and Giannis Angelopoulos. It’s nice to be on stage with them and to watch their musical journey up close. It’s like every turn takes us to a different musical area.”

Her son Tommy Lynch is with her this time. “I love that he plays the saxophone with us and sings a couple of songs. He is a good musician, I enjoy listening to him. I worked with young guys, the Youth Orchestra, I know that working with young artists is a blessing. They have the drive, the resources, they give everything from the bottom of their hearts, and their generation is offended. They survived the economic crisis, then the health crisis, and now the humanitarian crisis with the war, and they cannot lift their heads. We must support them.”

Paspala speaks in a special way about maternal pride. “You feel proud of yourself when you win something, but when someone else wins it, even your child, pride does not belong to you, but to them. My own feeling is the joy of conquering what you love and have conquered.”

What is she learning from her 23-year-old son in this stage encounter and what is he learning from her? “From me and all the old guys that are on stage, I hope he learns the discipline that he lacks a bit. And the essence of music, because nowadays we live on the surface. On the other hand, I get something from the energy and enthusiasm of the youth. He is not interested in singing, although it is easy. Sax loves rap too. He is a rapper with English lyrics.”

I want to sing new material, but nothing solid fell into my hands – I sang great songs, I feel uncomfortable writing myself.

How did she react when he told her? “He asked me what would you say if I said I wanted to be a rapper?” he says and laughs, as if remembering it, “I told him to find the lyrics and do it.”

Jazz in Harlem

I ask her to go back years to her teenage years in America, where she was born. She was six years old when her father taught her to play the piano, and at 14 she discovered that she had the gift of voice. In New York, he went to music school. “It was on the outskirts of Harlem and I was blown away by the daily commute to school. I first heard jazz at a friend’s house. Those were the years when I played a lot of Bach on the piano. But when I heard Chik Koria, I got upset. Another time in a bookstore, I was fascinated by a piano playing through the speakers. Following the music, I got to the recording section. It was an Oscar Peterson album. I immediately bought it. Then I made some pocket money giving piano lessons to the kids. “Everything I made I spent on vinyl records and concerts,” he says.

Her two brothers preferred rock. But the eldest, who also listened to jazz, advised her to listen to John Coltrane. “My father was very fond of music. His favorite singer was Gunaris, and composers – Hatsidakis, Theodorakis, Harchakos, Savvopoulos. A family friend brought us a box of records from Greece, and that’s how I discovered Tsitsanis and Papaioanna, an operetta – my mother liked it – and a vinyl record of Tasos Chalkias. This is how I got to know rebetika and elementary schools. So I heard from everywhere.”

Her favorite voices were Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Sarah Vaughn, Nat King Cole, but not Billie Holiday. “When she was younger, I couldn’t bear her pain. There are many genres in jazz now, even extreme things. I once went to a concert of a guitarist, I won’t say who, and I was struck by the extreme braininess and incomprehensibility of what I saw and heard. But most of all I was struck by the fact that there were only two women in the hall. He only approached men.”

He also says that there are many young artists performing at festivals abroad. “It’s promising, there’s a large audience that loves the genre, but there’s no room for artists to express themselves.”

Since 1982, which was created through her collaboration with Manos Hadjidaki, Elli Paspala has collaborated with many creators, but since 2007 she has been recording a personal album. “I want to sing new material, but nothing finished has come into my hands.” . She does not dare to write songs herself and musically arrange the documentary. “Because I’ve sung great songs, I feel unable to write myself, I’m afraid of what I’ll face in the mirror.”