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Nana Mouskouri music biography continued...

2008. Born Ioanna Mouskhouri on October 13, 1934, in Chania, Crete, Greece, Mouskouri's earliest formal training was in classical music, but her love was popular music. In 1959 after winning the first Greek Song Festival, she opted for pop, and made her first record later that same year. Mouskouri's early career coincided with an international interest in Greek popular music, due in part to the success of the movie Never on Sunday. The film's soundtrack contained a number of Mouskouri songs including "White Rose of Athens," recorded in 1961, which became her first record to sell over one million copies. In the early 1960s Mouskouri signed with the recording company Philips-Fontana France and moved to Paris. Her fame quickly spread throughout Europe. With her husband, guitarist George Petsilas, she formed the group the Athenians and began touring all over the world, learning the language of each country she performed in, so audiences could better appreciate her music.



By 1975 Mouskori had been awarded a wall of 100 gold and platinum records by Phonogram Philips Paris; by the early 1990s, she had received over 250 gold and platinum records. Her numerous awards include France's Grand Prix du Disque, the Golden Tulip Award in Holland, and the Golden Ticket Award in Germany for selling more than 100,000 seats in one year. With the release of her English-language album Only Love in 1993, she cracked the American market, going on a whirlwind 34-city tour to spread the word of her music. It was a critical and commercial success and led to further releases in the United States and a period of almost non-stop global touring. In 1997, she staged a high-profile Concert for Peace at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. This concert was later released as an album, and aired as a TV special on PBS in the U.S. Mouskouri slowed down in the new millennium and her final concert was given fittingly at a theater in Athens, Greece. Nana Mouskouri had come full-circle and left her millions of adoring fans with memories to last a lifetime.