Every year, the Greek music bands participating in the festival are selected by a three-member committee consisting of George Charonitis (journalist/music editor), Leonidas Antonopoulos (journalist/director of Kosmos 93.6) and George Mouchtaridis (radio producer/director of Pepper 96.6).
He is considered a jazz "expert" because he studied it in the seventies and eighties and because he had been writing about it for a decade (1978-1988) in the "Sound and HiFi" magazine, while later became the publisher and head editor of the "Jazz & Jazz" magazine for 20 years (1993-2013)! Ennio Morricone has been guiding him, as a spiritual father, from the age of 12 until today. Through his long-lasting musicographic activity at "Athinorama", he expanded his knowledge in other music genres, from absolute silence to absolute noise and from traditional music to avant-garde. Indeed, a genuine representative of no wave-like the dear fellow John Zorn.
He was born in Athens and grew up in Toronto, Stuttgart and Zographou district. He has been living in Nea Makri for 20 years. He has written articles for several music and non-music magazines, starting from "Sound & HiFi" and continuing with "Eptamisi", "Icones", and "Seven" in the Sunday edition of Eleftherotypia newspaper. He has been a member of The Jaywalkers band as a guitarist, singer and songwriter. He started his radio career with the "Radiosynnefoula" show on the Fourth Programme of Greece's state broadcaster, ERT. He continued as a radio presenter and journalist at Channel 5, Pop FM, Rhythmos and En lefko. At the same time, he worked as a music editor at news radio stations such as 902 Aristera at Fm and SKAI. He was a director at Kosmos 93.6 radio from 2003 to 2011, and in 2011 he set up Pepper 96.6 from scratch, where he has been a radio presenter in the 10.00-12.00 show for 19 consecutive years.
Born in Athens, in 1965. A journalist specialized in music, he is, now, Head of Kosmos Radio, the most popular of the radio services delivered by ERT (Greek Public Radio & TV) and host of a daily morning radio show. He has been hosting TV and radio programs related to music, especially jazz and world music, for more than 25 years. He was a founding member of Jazz FM -a pioneer jazz FM radio in the 90s- and has also served as music consultant of the Hellenic Festival and as artistic director of the "Sounds Of The World" section of the Festival.