The Vassilis Tsitsanis collection of recordings in the collaborative research project MELOS - Online Workshop

Participants

• The research team of the Music Documentation Laboratory of the Department of Music Studies of the University of Ioannina.
• AltSol company, developer of the digital platform.
• The Early Recording Association (ERA), University of Surrey, UK.

The research initiative “M.EL.O.S.” brings together musical collections from three organisations. Through this project, we have been developing an open-source music cultural management platform called “ReasonableGraph”, which includes a specialised Music Ontology based on internationally recognised conceptual models. The metadata from these collections form an interconnected and open repository of knowledge within a National Archive of Musical Entities.

The research team at the University of Ioannina is focused on the commercial discography of Vassilis Tsitsanis, one of the most prolific Greek songwriters of urban folk-popular music, who recorded at least 550 original compositions between 1936 and 1983. A significant number of these pieces were recorded more than once. Cataloguing the discography of a popular music composer and performer presents considerable challenges, especially in the context of digital indexing and cataloguing. In addition to entering formal data into the database, the team is focused on managing metadata, both from direct listening (e.g., harmony, rhythm) and from primary and secondary sources (e.g., biographies of prominent figures). The methodologies and findings of this project are intended to serve as a model for documenting similar material, both Greek and international. In this workshop, co-organised with the Early Recordings Association at the University of Surrey, the research teams from the University of Ioannina and AltSol will present the key features of the digital platform, the methodologies employed, and the technical aspects involved.

Programme

• 12-12:30pm: Introduction, presentation of the UOI participation (George Kokkonis).
• The fields of the platform (Nikos Ordoulidis).
• 12:30-1pm: Documentation of the material (George Evangelou, Spilios Kounas).
• 1-1:30pm: The digital platform and the library models (AltSol team).
• 1:30-2pm: Open discussion (chair: George Kokkonis).

University of Ioannina research team

• Principal investigator: George Kokkonis, Musicologist, Associate Professor, Department of Music Studies, University of Ioannina.
• Nikos Ordoulidis, Musicologist.
• Spilios Kounas, Musicologist.
• George Evangelou, Musicologist.
• Nikos Dionysopoulos, Technical staff.

AltSol research team

• Nikos Papazis, IT engineer.
• Kostas Maistrelis, IT engineer.
• Pantelis Brattis, System librarian.
• Simos Leonidakos, IT engineer.

Music Greek Audiovisual Collections 

Early Recording Association