Mikis Theodorakis

Michail "Mikis" Theodorakis was born 29 July 1925 and spent six decades turning Greek sound into something the world recognized: the bouzouki pulse under Zorba's Dance, the tension coiled into Z, the Grammy-nominated menace of Serpico. He composed the "Mauthausen Trilogy" - called the most beautiful musical work ever written about the Holocaust - and over a thousand other pieces. The 1967 junta imprisoned him and banned his songs, which made both more powerful. He served as an MP for the Communist Party from 1981 to 1990, then crossed the aisle to help pull Greece out of scandal, joining a coalition under the centre-right and becoming a minister under Konstantinos Mitsotakis. He kept speaking - for the left, for Greek-Turkish-Cypriot relations, against the Iraq War - until his death on 2 September 2021, still Greece's best-known living composer to the end.