Music Soup Musician - All About Jazz

Updated: September 23, 2024

Active since: 2006

Music Soup is a mainstay on the Greek jazz scene where they perform in all types of venues, from festivals and concert halls to jazz clubs, bars, and cafes. Evgenia and Nestor first met in 1998 when Nestor hired Evgenia to sing for a performance with his band. They continued playing together on and off for many years before they decided to form MUSIC SOUP in 2006.

According to Evgenia, “We came up with our group name because we wanted to play different jazz-oriented styles in different group settings. We wanted a name that was a bit light-hearted, because we’re serious about our music but we prefer to not take ourselves very seriously.”

Cut To The Chase celebrates the group’s 10-year anniversary. Nestor adds, “We wanted our first project to reflect our musical journey as individuals and as a band. We try to capture in our compositions what it’s like as human beings to really live in the world and interact with people in different situations; therefore, in order to represent a whole range of our personal experiences, we don’t limit ourselves stylistically.”

Evgenia Karlafti and Nestor Dimopoulos are two highly accomplished musicians, composers, and arrangers who, although they live half a world away, have digested the quintessentially American idiom of jazz and created a sound that is imbued with their own culture, experiences, and personalities. Evgenia is an imaginative singer, organist, and pianist, while Nestor’s musicianship is luminous. Together, along with their stellar sidemen, they have created a project that is high energy and innovative.

About Evgenia Karlafti

Music has always been part of Evgenia's life. Her father played the guitar, her mother played the accordion, and Evgenia began playing piano at the age of four. She is a classically trained pianist and has been a soloist and member of several chamber music ensembles, a keyboardist in rock groups, and she has also performed Greek and ethnic music. She started singing jazz as an adult and fell in love with the freedom the music offers. From that point on, she decided to focus mainly on singing and playing jazz.

About Nestor Dimopoulos

Nestor started playing classical guitar at an early age but was curious to see what was beyond that, so he decided to enroll at Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he studied jazz guitar. He worked with outstanding professors such as Ed Tommasi, Garison Fewel, and Ron Savage. After earning a degree at Berklee, he took private lessons in jazz improvisation with Jerry Bergonzi. Nestor came back to Greece after spending a decade in the USA. Besides leading his own band, he also performs as a sideman in jazz festivals, clubs, and special events.

Music Soup: Upbeat Mood

Read "Upbeat Mood" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
September 15, 2024

Upbeat Mood from Music Soup, comprised of Athens, Greece-based guitarist Nestor Dimopoulos, Hammond B-3 organist Evgenia Karlafti and drummer Vagelis Kotzabasis, delivers eight enjoyable and upbeat swinging selections. Seven are originals from either Dimopoulos, Karlafti alone, or co-written. There is intelligent playing and fine soloing throughout. “Korean Apartment" opens things and is a fast straight-ahead burner. Dimopoulos states the melody before stretching on an extended solo. Evgenia Karlafti's organ comps in both counterpoint and chordal pops, as ...

“Karlafti and Nestor Dimopoulos have a wonderful thing going on with Music Soup, balancing the accessible and grooving with musically provocative material. One of the best organ dates of the year.”

Jazz Views with C.J Shearn

…good stuff, swinging in intricate ways, funking and laying back… This is a band with its own personality. And it moves the organ trio ahead without a lot of the requisite Jimmy Smith cliches. Good job!

Jazz Views with C.J Shearn

Grego Applegate, Gapplegate Music Review

the emphasis throughout is on the trio, which could pass at times for Joey DeFrancesco's group...Fans of organ combos will find much to enjoy in this pleasing effort.

Scott Yanow, Downbeat magazine 3, 1/2*

The most progressive set considered, here, Music Soup's Cut to the Chase is firmly in the jazz organ trio neighborhood while expanding the perimeter of what we should consider the standard soul-jazz repertoire...This is the release for the more forward-minded listener that is looking for something new from an old format.

C. Michael Bailey, All About Jazz

“The hot bop, funky, cool jazz this team produces will get your juices flowing… Each of the musicians is well versed and shines in the spotlight when called upon. Evgenia and Nestor composed the music, a CD that will enliven any commute!”

O’S Place Jazz Newsletter by Oscar Groomes

High fliers on the local Greek jazz scene, this trio is celebrating their 10th anniversary with a smoking B3 led set that is an appropriate discovery for a label led by a B3 player in the flesh. With everyone on board knowing their apples, we get a sense that jazz is the international language once again as everyone on board knows what to do and adds some other side of the world flavor to the B3 festivities. This organ is purely organic with a zesty taste drawn from Mediterranean soil. Check it out.

Chris Spector, Midwest Record

... I recognize immediately that these serious musicians are challenging the listener and themselves to play outside the box.(...)

Music Soup is a good name for this trio of musicians because they embrace a mixed bag of styles and musical concepts that mirror their decade of playing together and their individual personalities...

... Because they have been working together for ten years, Music Soup has a tight, cohesive sound. Their music is well written and produced. On “Your Song” horns join the group. Special guests Dimitris Papadopoulos on trumpet, Dimitri Vassilakis on tenor sax and Antonis Andreou on trombone fatten the sound. However these horns, (nicely arranged by Haris Ziouva) are merely icing on the creative cake that Karlafti and Dimopoulos have baked. Nestor’s bluesy guitar and Evgenia Karlafti’s organ mastery are the fireworks of this production.
Dee Dee Mc Neal, Musical Memoires

All the music heard here is composed by Evgenia and Nestor and is richly varied, including intimate ballads and punchy up-tempo pieces that call to mind organ-guitar bands of earlier years, although here given a thoroughly modern makeover.

Worth looking out for.

Bruce Crowther, JazzMostly

.... back in Athens, this CD indicates that there is jazz of Olympian standard going on (...)

Music Soup are, basically, an organ/guitar/drums trio augmented for this album by three horns. Karlafti can swing - think Shirley Scott and Dorothy Donegan and Evgenia is up there with them and quite a few of her male contemporaries! (...)

Guitar is comparable with anything heard 'twixt Adriatic and Atlantic and the horns also have their moments in the Aegean sun...

Cut To The Chase is described as hip, eclectic jazz from Greece and I, for one, won't argue with that.

Lance Liddle, Bebop Spoken here

You don’t hear a lot about jazz music from Greece, which is a shame, as they apparently have a very happening scene there. Music Soup may help heighten awareness of Greek expertise in the jazz world with their new CD, “Cut to the Chase”, which features a self-proclaimed ‘eclectic’ approach that covers hard bop, RnB, fusion and more. (...) Both Evgenia and Nestor are virtuoso performers. Evgenia sometimes has the expected bluesy soul jazz sound often associated with the B3, but she often takes on the more abstract post bop sounds of Larry Young, and even some European jazz-rock along the lines of Dave Stewart. Nestor reveals that he is a fan of Wes Montgomery, Pat Metheny and others, but often his mix of abstract harmonies and rhythmic blues may have you thinking John Scofield.

“Cut to the Chase” opens strong with the title cut that mixes driving post bop with Greek influenced odd-metered fusion. This is an excellent direction for the band to pursue, and they return to a similar sound on “Senior Citizen” and “A New Start”. Other instrumental cuts include the bluesy groove of “Movin” and the Bossa-Nova flavor of “Skywalk”. The remaining four tracks feature Evgenia’s vocals on songs that range from ballads to dance oriented RnB. Evgenia is a great singer (...) Overall “Cut to the Chase” makes for a great introduction for Music Soup, and the flow of the tracks is very much like a live show.

John Sanders, Jazz Music Archives

Although the album "Cut To The Chase" is recorded in a studio, the flow of the nine tracks evokes a live recording; It has such momentum, energy and move! Nearly 52 minutes footage immersive and blood pumping...I highly recommend, this really is a very slick album!

Jan Hocek, Jazzport

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