简介：Eleni Violaris was born in London to a family of professional musicians. Her father is of Greek heritage and her mother, Welsh. Eleni, who sings and plays the piano, flute and guitar, has been making music and taking part in professional recordings since she was five years old. As a youngster, Eleni recorded children’s solo and chorus parts on a double CD recording of a contemporary music drama/opera entitled, ‘El Cid’, written and composed by her father (Andonis Violaris) in discussion with Placido Domingo. Andonis also wrote, composed and produced songs for the “60-million” album-selling artist, Demis Roussos. At 12 years of age, Eleni, together with her younger brother Adam Violaris (a music prodigy), performed and sang to a special delegation from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Geneva. This resulted in a commission to record a single and music video entitled, ‘Children for the World - Call You Now’, to help support UNEP’s outreach programme during the ‘Year of the Mountains’ in 2002. Eleni’s stand-out solo vocal performance on the single, attracted the attention of record label executives at Sony Music and Polydor. Eleni is also an actress and classical ballet dancer, who considered a dancing career after being talent scouted for the Royal Academy of Dance but decided on a professional music career instead. Eleni went straight from college to singing, composing and writing songs (words and music) for major BBC arts programmes, including the 12-part BBC Two series, ‘Francesco’s Mediterranean Voyage’ and the landmark BBC One David Dimbleby series ‘Seven Ages of Britain’, in which she worked alongside her brother, Adam Violaris, also a composer on the series, as well as her father, who was the executive music producer of the series. Eleni performed all the vocal cues on the ‘Seven Ages of Britain’ series, including co-writing and performing the end title song, in Anglo-Saxon; a concept she developed for the series. Eleni also co-wrote and performed a number of songs and cues in Latin and Hindi. Eleni also recorded two Italian arias, written and composed by Adam Violaris. It was the Italian aria for the scene of David Dimbleby in Renaissance Florence that excited and prompted Sony Classical and Warner Classics & Jazz to offer to release a soundtrack CD of the series. This encouraged Eleni & Adam to write the concept album, ‘Rainstriker’, which Warner Classics & Jazz offered to release back-to-back with the ‘Seven Ages of Britain’ soundtrack CD. In 2012, Eleni toured with Andrea Bocelli in the UK as a backing singer as part of the acclaimed Crouch End Festival Chorus, which included performances at the 02 Arena and the Birmingham NEC, as well as the televised Classic Brit Awards at the Royal Albert Hall. Eleni has also recorded backing vocals on albums by Katherine Jenkins and Lesley Garrett, again with the CEFC. Musical Background Eleni and her brother Adam were taught music privately from an early age by their father, Andonis Violaris, a successful commercial composer and music teacher. Andonis passed onto Eleni and Adam invaluable knowledge he gained from learning with some of the finest musicians of the 20th century whilst a student at The Royal Academy of Music in the 1970’s. This includes composition, orchestration, fugue, harmony and counterpoint, which he studied with the great English symphonic and operatic composer and pianist, Alan Bush (who studied with John Ireland and Artur Schnabel, knew Edward Elgar and was a contemporary of Vaughan-Williams); tuition with Eric Fenby (the amanuensis of Frederick Delius) and film music composition and orchestration with Leighton Lucas, who composed the music to a number of iconic British films. These included ‘The Dam Busters’ and ‘Ice Cold In Alex’, the opening title music of which was used as a ‘temp-track’ by John Williams for the opening scenes of ‘Star Wars’. Whilst at the Royal Academy, Andonis was the winner of the prestigious ‘Lady Holland’ and ‘Eric Coates’ prizes for composition. Eric Coates was also the composer of the ‘Dam Busters’ march.