rowing up in Thessaloniki, Greece, Aikaterini Grigoriadou remembers her home always being filled with music. It was only natural she’d turn a family pasttime into a career, eventually turning to opera.
But after she earned diplomas at local music conservatories, the Greek financial crisis pushed her abroad as the local economy plunged in 2011.
“I was saying, ‘What am I going to do? What’s next?’” said Grigoriadou, an Honors College student who is graduating with a bachelor’s degree in music. “I was scared to go abroad, and I didn’t know where I’d go.”
Auditioning in multiple cities in Europe, she had been accepted to a program in London. But she had also met then-director of Georgia State’s School of Music, Dwight Coleman, when he was visiting Greece and teaching a class there a couple years earlier.
“He did miracles with my voice, and my mother said, ‘I don’t know what he did with your voice, but I trust him,’” Grigoriadou said.
Later, she was interviewed by Kathryn Kozaitis, chair of the Georgia State’s Department of Anthropology, who was conducting Fulbright research on how the financial crisis affected the lives of Thessaloniki residents.
It was a time when some in France and Germany, resentful of contributing large amounts of money to mitigate the crisis, derided the Greek people as lazy and deserving of their fate. For the opera singer and other Greeks, it hurt deeply. But Grigoriadou was moved by Kozaitis’ interest in ordinary Greek citizens’ wellbeing.
“I was amazed that somebody else really cared about what was going on in my country,” she said. “Things were difficult and nobody would take us seriously.”
She remembered the professors’ warmth when she was accepted to Georgia State in 2012, and she enrolled in the School of Music that fall.
At Georgia State, Grigoriadou assisted Kozaitis’ research by managing data and organizing documentation and photos, aided by her knowledge of Greek. After commencement, she plans on pursuing graduate work in anthropology.
“Anthropology seeks the meaning behind what people do and create,” Grigoriadou said. “What music does is help you understand the universe, and how we represent and depict it. It’s always connected in a way.”
—Jeremy Craig