Today Eleni Karaindrou (@elenikaraindrouofficial) celebrates her 80th birthday. This year also marks the 30th anniversary of her association with ECM records. Her influential body of work – a large part of which was produced over the three decades of close collaboration with Manfred Eicher and ECM Records – has been featured in many plays and motion pictures throughout the years and some of her most important music came about as a result of her long-standing cooperation with Greek director Theodoros Angelopoulos. Time magazine once suggested that “if Homer had written music, it might sound something like Eleni’s work; dark and brooding,[…] at once plaintive and erotically lyrical, it would sing of love and loss, of the passion that motivates humans to achieve great things”, calling her “Greece’s most eloquent living composer”. Just recently, Eleni was honoured with the lifetime achievement award by the World Soundtrack Academy. Her music features on over a dozen ECM releases – starting with “Music for Films” in 1991 and including multiple collaborations with the likes of Sokratis Sinopoulos, Jan Garbarek and Kim Kashkashian. Besides capturing her music to Lebanese-Canadian writer Wajdi Mouawad’s acclaimed play “Tous des oiseaux”, Eleni’s most recent album of the same name also comprises her award-nominated work for the Iranian film “Bomb, A Love Story”.