Mr Charis Ioannou

Charis Ioannou was born in Nicosia, Cyprus in 1976. In 1997 he was enrolled at Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he studied saxophone performance and Jazz composition. Charis won the Woodwind Achievement Award in the last year of his studies in Boston and in 2001, after graduation, he moved to New York where he stayed for three years. While in New York, Charis earned his Master’s degree in performance from the New York University and in the meantime performed and taught around the state. Charis left from the United States in 2005 and moved back to Cyprus. The return to his home country found Charis collaborating with various musicians and appearing in all the major clubs and festivals around Cyprus as well as in various venues around the world including performances in Greece, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Poland, Serbia, Spain, England, Italy, Luxembourg, Belgium, Holland, Lebanon, Germany, Senegal and the U.S.A. Charis has also collaborated with the American Embassy in Cyprus in a Bi-Communal Jazz program called Jazz Futures through which he has appeared all over Cyprus performing alongside the group of Ari Roland and Chris Byars for 6 years during the period 2007-2013. In 2015 he led BopCy, a quartet with all Cypriot musicians and won the 2nd place in the first Greek jazz competition held in Athens in the same year and appeared in Syros as part of the International Jazz Day 2015. He has conducted numerous workshops in Cyprus, Lebanon, Greece and Italy. Charis is currently teaching the saxophone and the jazz idiom at The University of Nicosia and continuing to perform and record as a leader as well as a sideman in Cyprus and abroad. He endorses Hemke reeds made by D’addario woodwinds.