It's funny how you can discover new artists. I heard about Jon Christos through Josh Groban's message board - not very outstanding in itself cause I've heard about MANY artists there - but Jon was in fact a Groban fan himself and a frequent poster. His friend Alf, who's been member of the message boards for a while now, let us all know about details regarding Jon's CD release and provided web site links etc. He quickly got his own little fan base of Grobanites who now, in addition to their Grobanite titles also call themselves "Christosians".Unfortunately I was unable to hear audio samples of his music until recently (a computer error makes me unable to hear audio in Flash, which is used on MySpace sites) but when I did I quickly realised that the board members' praise of Jon's voice was well deserved. I ordered the CD from amazon and it arrived today.
I was not the least disappointed. The 15 tracks range from opera arias to romantic pop ballads to Italian, dramatic crossover songs "Il Divo" style. But there ends the comparison; if Il Divo was junk food, Jon Christos would be a gourmet meal. He sings in English, Italian, Spanish and even Greek, plays the piano - and the violin, though not on this album.
My personal favourites are Immenso Sogno and Jubilate Domum, which should be in the music encyclopedias under "ultimate classical crossover ballads". The opera arias are also very refreshing - he proves that he can tackle opera, in contradiction to a lot of other crossover singers who just don't have the voice for it but are trying to get away with it anyway.
After listening through the CD I also noticed that his voice sounds a little like that of Øystein Wiik, one of Norway's most famous opera singers a few years ago and my hometown's greatest pride. ;)
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