Markos Chaidemenos - Light Beam (2026) [Hi-Res]
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BAND/ARTIST: Markos Chaidemenos
- Title: Light Beam
- Year Of Release: 2026
- Label: Markos Chaidemenos
- Genre: Jazz, Vocal Jazz
- Quality: mp3 320 kbps / flac lossless (tracks) / flac 24bits - 44.1kHz
- Total Time: 00:32:21
- Total Size: 75 / 200 / 360 mb
- WebSite: Album Preview
Tracklist
01. Si-iS
02. Light Beam
03. Ego
04. 11 Stars
05. Pisa
06. 33
33. PREVIEW
07. Aai
There’s a particular quality of light in Greek summers — unhurried, golden, generous — and it suffuses every minute of Light Beam, the fifth release from Greek pianist, composer, and arranger Markos Chaidemenos. This is music of optimism and sunshine, of open windows and long afternoons, and it arrives with genuinely not a fault to find in it. Backed by a successful Kickstarter campaign and pressed to heavyweight vinyl, it is arguably his most ambitious project to date — a record that expands his familiar piano trio language outward into the realm of chamber music, weaving a string quartet and voice into the ensemble to create something that sits comfortably between contemporary jazz and modern classical writing.
Crucially, though, this isn’t the hushed, monochrome palette that much contemporary piano-led jazz has settled into. There’s no ECM-style austerity here, no studied melancholy. Nor is it club music or crossover froth. What Chaidemenos has made instead is a serious, warm-blooded record that feels purpose-built for the live stage — the kind of album that should translate beautifully to a packed room of younger listeners who may have come to jazz through film scores, neo-soul, or the contemporary classical crossover rather than through Blue Note reissues.
For those unfamiliar with Chaidemenos, his story is one of quiet determination. He came to the piano relatively late, discovering the instrument at sixteen and falling deeply in love with jazz in his early twenties. Though he holds a degree in Informatics and Telecommunications from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, music eventually won out. He completed his classical studies at the Athens Conservatory before tearing through the jazz piano programme at Praxis Conservatory in just two and a half years, later adding a Master’s in Jazz Performance from the Ionian University. His pianistic voice draws from a rich lineage — the muscular swing of Oscar Peterson, the harmonic adventurousness of Chick Corea, the lyricism of Mulgrew Miller, and the introspective modernism of Brad Mehldau — though what emerges is distinctly his own.
His discography traces a clear artistic arc. It began with Remains (2016), a live recording captured during the ERT Third Programme’s Jazz in the City radio show, documenting a raw, in-the-moment piano trio performance rooted in open improvisation. A notable staging post came in 2019 with his collaboration with the Panos Tzinilis Sextet, a project that drew nine of its ten tracks from the pen of the great Horace Silver — a deep dive into hard bop vocabulary that clearly left its mark on Chaidemenos’s rhythmic vocabulary and sense of groove. New Era (2020) followed, before Caravan (2021) offered a loving engagement with the piano trio tradition — original compositions sitting alongside standards such as the title track, Monk’s I Mean You, and I Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good). Then came The Day After (2024), a more introspective work that explored loss and emotional processing through restraint and carefully crafted dynamics. Along the way, his composition The Loss (2023) found a wider audience when it was featured in the Netflix series Maestro in Blue.
Light Beam feels like the natural next step. Where The Day After stripped things back to the essentials of the trio, this new record opens the canvas considerably. Joining Chaidemenos on piano are Yiannis Vagianos on bass and Panagiotis Kostopoulos on drums — the latter a returning collaborator from Caravan — alongside a full string quartet featuring Babis Karasavvidis and Kalliopi Mitropoulou on violins, Stelios Papanastasis on viola, and Giorgos Tamiolakis on cello. Vocalist and lyricist Irini Arabatzi adds a further human dimension to the sound world.
As a composer, Chaidemenos writes with a generosity of melody and a clear-eyed sense of structure. The string arrangements are integrated into the harmonic fabric, supporting the trio’s movement rather than hovering politely above it. The tunes themselves are built to be remembered and to be played — singable heads, buoyant rhythmic cells, and room for the players to breathe and respond to one another.
Side A opens with Si-iS, a piece that announces the album’s intentions immediately. A piano motif sets the scene before the strings evolve around it, building into a lush, enveloping soundscape — there is genuinely nothing here to fault. The title track, Light Beam, follows, the first of the vocal numbers, and an unexpected air of South African influence runs through the piano pattern, giving the piece a distinctive lilt. Ego is the longest track on the album and a real centrepiece — a powerful number with another vocal contribution that ticks every box it sets out to tick. The side closes with 11 Stars, where bassist Yiannis Vagianos steps forward and drives the tune with real authority.
Side B opens with Pisa, a track that takes on a noticeably orchestral feel, though the core trio still dominates the texture. It’s a brooding piece that would sit comfortably on any contemporary release of recent years — a genuine joy to hear. 33 offers another vocal, and it is worth pausing here to address Irini Arabatzi’s contributions across the record. Hers is not a jazz voice in the traditional sense. Still, her contemporary style proves refreshing atop the music below, and she consistently brings a different kind of expressive weight to the pieces she features on. The album closes with Aai, another vocal number — and here a small reservation creeps in. There may be one too many vocal tracks across the record; the music throughout is strong enough to stand on its own without quite so much vocal input. That said, this final piece, returning to the power-trio format, is genuinely fantastic.
A word, too, on the physical release. There’s a long-held rule with vinyl that the music on any given side shouldn’t exceed 22 minutes if the pressing quality is to be preserved, and Chaidemenos has wisely adhered to it. That discipline pays off — the performance shines as brightly as it could, and the pressing itself signifies an artist who respects his own music enough to present it in its best possible form. The artwork deserves mention as well. The music here is light, breezy, and fun, and the cover by John Chaldezos captures that spirit perfectly, with a subtle nod to the symbolic abstraction of Catalan artist Joan Miró.
In a discography that has moved from the live immediacy of Remains through the tradition-steeped Caravan to the emotional restraint of The Day After, Light Beam represents Chaidemenos reaching for something more cinematic, more expansive, and — above all — more joyful. A minor quibble over vocal balance aside, this is a beautifully conceived, beautifully performed, beautifully presented record. For a younger audience discovering jazz through adjacent genres, it could prove a genuine gateway; for seasoned listeners, it’s simply a pleasure. Catch this band live when you can. You won’t want to miss it.
01. Si-iS
02. Light Beam
03. Ego
04. 11 Stars
05. Pisa
06. 33
33. PREVIEW
07. Aai
There’s a particular quality of light in Greek summers — unhurried, golden, generous — and it suffuses every minute of Light Beam, the fifth release from Greek pianist, composer, and arranger Markos Chaidemenos. This is music of optimism and sunshine, of open windows and long afternoons, and it arrives with genuinely not a fault to find in it. Backed by a successful Kickstarter campaign and pressed to heavyweight vinyl, it is arguably his most ambitious project to date — a record that expands his familiar piano trio language outward into the realm of chamber music, weaving a string quartet and voice into the ensemble to create something that sits comfortably between contemporary jazz and modern classical writing.
Crucially, though, this isn’t the hushed, monochrome palette that much contemporary piano-led jazz has settled into. There’s no ECM-style austerity here, no studied melancholy. Nor is it club music or crossover froth. What Chaidemenos has made instead is a serious, warm-blooded record that feels purpose-built for the live stage — the kind of album that should translate beautifully to a packed room of younger listeners who may have come to jazz through film scores, neo-soul, or the contemporary classical crossover rather than through Blue Note reissues.
For those unfamiliar with Chaidemenos, his story is one of quiet determination. He came to the piano relatively late, discovering the instrument at sixteen and falling deeply in love with jazz in his early twenties. Though he holds a degree in Informatics and Telecommunications from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, music eventually won out. He completed his classical studies at the Athens Conservatory before tearing through the jazz piano programme at Praxis Conservatory in just two and a half years, later adding a Master’s in Jazz Performance from the Ionian University. His pianistic voice draws from a rich lineage — the muscular swing of Oscar Peterson, the harmonic adventurousness of Chick Corea, the lyricism of Mulgrew Miller, and the introspective modernism of Brad Mehldau — though what emerges is distinctly his own.
His discography traces a clear artistic arc. It began with Remains (2016), a live recording captured during the ERT Third Programme’s Jazz in the City radio show, documenting a raw, in-the-moment piano trio performance rooted in open improvisation. A notable staging post came in 2019 with his collaboration with the Panos Tzinilis Sextet, a project that drew nine of its ten tracks from the pen of the great Horace Silver — a deep dive into hard bop vocabulary that clearly left its mark on Chaidemenos’s rhythmic vocabulary and sense of groove. New Era (2020) followed, before Caravan (2021) offered a loving engagement with the piano trio tradition — original compositions sitting alongside standards such as the title track, Monk’s I Mean You, and I Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good). Then came The Day After (2024), a more introspective work that explored loss and emotional processing through restraint and carefully crafted dynamics. Along the way, his composition The Loss (2023) found a wider audience when it was featured in the Netflix series Maestro in Blue.
Light Beam feels like the natural next step. Where The Day After stripped things back to the essentials of the trio, this new record opens the canvas considerably. Joining Chaidemenos on piano are Yiannis Vagianos on bass and Panagiotis Kostopoulos on drums — the latter a returning collaborator from Caravan — alongside a full string quartet featuring Babis Karasavvidis and Kalliopi Mitropoulou on violins, Stelios Papanastasis on viola, and Giorgos Tamiolakis on cello. Vocalist and lyricist Irini Arabatzi adds a further human dimension to the sound world.
As a composer, Chaidemenos writes with a generosity of melody and a clear-eyed sense of structure. The string arrangements are integrated into the harmonic fabric, supporting the trio’s movement rather than hovering politely above it. The tunes themselves are built to be remembered and to be played — singable heads, buoyant rhythmic cells, and room for the players to breathe and respond to one another.
Side A opens with Si-iS, a piece that announces the album’s intentions immediately. A piano motif sets the scene before the strings evolve around it, building into a lush, enveloping soundscape — there is genuinely nothing here to fault. The title track, Light Beam, follows, the first of the vocal numbers, and an unexpected air of South African influence runs through the piano pattern, giving the piece a distinctive lilt. Ego is the longest track on the album and a real centrepiece — a powerful number with another vocal contribution that ticks every box it sets out to tick. The side closes with 11 Stars, where bassist Yiannis Vagianos steps forward and drives the tune with real authority.
Side B opens with Pisa, a track that takes on a noticeably orchestral feel, though the core trio still dominates the texture. It’s a brooding piece that would sit comfortably on any contemporary release of recent years — a genuine joy to hear. 33 offers another vocal, and it is worth pausing here to address Irini Arabatzi’s contributions across the record. Hers is not a jazz voice in the traditional sense. Still, her contemporary style proves refreshing atop the music below, and she consistently brings a different kind of expressive weight to the pieces she features on. The album closes with Aai, another vocal number — and here a small reservation creeps in. There may be one too many vocal tracks across the record; the music throughout is strong enough to stand on its own without quite so much vocal input. That said, this final piece, returning to the power-trio format, is genuinely fantastic.
A word, too, on the physical release. There’s a long-held rule with vinyl that the music on any given side shouldn’t exceed 22 minutes if the pressing quality is to be preserved, and Chaidemenos has wisely adhered to it. That discipline pays off — the performance shines as brightly as it could, and the pressing itself signifies an artist who respects his own music enough to present it in its best possible form. The artwork deserves mention as well. The music here is light, breezy, and fun, and the cover by John Chaldezos captures that spirit perfectly, with a subtle nod to the symbolic abstraction of Catalan artist Joan Miró.
In a discography that has moved from the live immediacy of Remains through the tradition-steeped Caravan to the emotional restraint of The Day After, Light Beam represents Chaidemenos reaching for something more cinematic, more expansive, and — above all — more joyful. A minor quibble over vocal balance aside, this is a beautifully conceived, beautifully performed, beautifully presented record. For a younger audience discovering jazz through adjacent genres, it could prove a genuine gateway; for seasoned listeners, it’s simply a pleasure. Catch this band live when you can. You won’t want to miss it.
| Jazz | Vocal Jazz | FLAC / APE | Mp3 | HD & Vinyl
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