ΣΥΛΛΟΓΟΣ ΚΕΦΙ «ΜΑΖΙ ΓΙΑ ΤΗΝ ΖΩΗ»

Mazi gia tin Zoi is a charity concert at the Olympia Municipal Music Theatre on Akademias Street in central Athens, on March 3, 2026. Three voices from different decades of Greek songwriting share a stage the National Opera held for fifty years.

Nena Venetsanou has spent four decades balancing classical vocal technique with Greek folk song. She trained at the Hellenic Conservatory before studying singing in Paris with Irma Kolasi and art history at the University of Franche-Comte. Her settings of poetry by Greek, French, and Italian writers — Michel Deguy, Paul Eluard, Alberto Savinio — place her at the crossroads of entechno and laiko. Kostas Thomaidis, born in Thessaloniki in 1953, has served Greek song for half a century, interpreting poetry by Seferis, Cavafy, and Kavvadias set to music by Thanos Mikroutsikos. He worked with the Nouveau Theatre de Belgique under director Henri Ronse from 1982 to 1988 before returning to Athens. Miltos Paschalidis, the youngest of the three, grew up in Kalamata, came to Athens as a founding member of Chainides, and has built a solo career across entechno and rock since his 1995 debut Paramythi me Lypimeno Telos. Soloist Diana Vranousi joins the ensemble on piano.

The evening is organized by Syllogos K.E.F.I. — the Association of Cancer Patients, Volunteers, Friends, and Doctors — to support Mazi kai sto Spiti, a program providing at-home psychosocial and palliative care for end-stage cancer patients. The ticket you hold funds something specific: a nurse or counselor arriving at a patient's door when the hospital stay has ended but the need has not.

The audience at a benefit concert of this caliber splits between two impulses: people who come for the cause and discover the music, and people who come for the music and discover the cause. The Olympia — named after Maria Callas, whose voice once filled the room — seats both comfortably.

The program moves through the distinct repertoires of each headliner. Venetsanou's classical-folk hybrids accompanied by Giorgos Tosikian on classical guitar. Thomaidis's poetry-settings carried by Thymios Papadopoulos on woodwinds and Yannis Belonis on piano. Paschalidis's rock-inflected entechno that shifts the room's energy forward. The contrast between them is the point — different generations, different traditions, the same stage.

If you want a late-night concert with encores and standing ovations, this is a seated evening at a formal music theater that ends before midnight. But if you want to hear three voices that span fifty years of Greek songwriting in a hall built for exactly this kind of sound, and you want the ticket to mean something beyond your own evening, this is the night.

The Olympia is at Akademias 59, within walking distance of Panepistimio metro. Curtain at 20:00. Tickets range from ten euros through twenty, thirty, and fifty for box seats, available through TicketServices with a five-percent online discount. The event runs under the auspices of Athens Municipality.

Three performers, three traditions, one cause that needs the room full.