Gioconda's Smile is one of the most famous albums by Greek composer Manos Hadjidakis

Manos Hadjidakis

Manos Hatzidakis was a Greek composer and theorist of the Greek music. He was also one of the main prime movers of the "Éntekhno" song ....

. It is considered one of the classic albums of 20th century music in Greece.

The album was recorded in New York in 1965, with Quincy Jones

Quincy Jones

Quincy Delightt Jones, Jr. is an American record producer and musician. A conductor, musical arranger, film composer, television producer, and trumpeter. His career spans five decades in the entertainment industry and a record 79 Grammy Award nominations, 27 Grammys, including a Grammy Legend...

 as producer. It was first released in USA in 1965 with twelve orchestral songs, and that same year in Greece, but "The Athletes" and "The Soldier" were not included.

The album was re-released in 2004, as part of the EMI Classics

EMI Classics

EMI Classics is a record label of EMI, formed in 1990 in order to reduce the need to create country-specific packaging and catalogs for internationally distributed classical music releases....

 series.

The album was re-released with a variety of covers. Except for the first version, which was released in USA, all of the covers featured Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa is a portrait by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. It is a painting in oil on a poplar panel, completed circa 1503–1519...

. The cover and, most notably, the title of the album are explained by Manos Hadjidakis in the introductory note he wrote for the album:

Track listing

External links

• [ Gioconda's Smile at Allmusic]
• Gioconda's Smile live at YouTube
• Manos Hadjidakis official website