Events in

Heraklion

Heraklion is the capital of Cretan music. Nikos Xylouris, one of the island's greatest lyra players and singers, opened the first dedicated Cretan-music hall in the city in 1967; his brother Psarantonis carried the family's lyra tradition to international stages. The Aerakis Cretan Musical Workshop on Korai Street, a record shop since 1974 with its own label from 1976, remains the main keeper of recorded Cretan music. Just south of the city, the village of Houdetsi is home to the Labyrinth Musical Workshop, founded by Ross Daly in 1982 and based there since 2002, which teaches modal music from across the Balkans, the Middle East and Asia.

The live calendar widens in summer. Houdetsi hosts a free four-day world-music festival each August across five stages; the city's Over The Wall festival, running since 2016, brings doom, thrash and stoner-rock bands each August; and the Heraklion Summer Arts Festival programmes music, theatre and dance in two open-air theatres named after Heraklion's own Nikos Kazantzakis and the composer Manos Hatzidakis. Every show is on Mood.