ATHENS – Popular and highly regarded Greek composer Thanos Mikroutsikos has passed away after suffering a heart attack in a private clinic, where he had been admitted due to recent health problems. The composer’s death was announced on Saturday evening.

Messages of deep sorrow over the composer’s death were sent by President of the Hellenic Republic Prokopios Pavlopoulos, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, main opposition SYRIZA President Alexis Tsipras, the SYRIZA party, Culture Minister Lina Mendoni, Movement for Change (KINAL) President Fofi Gennimata, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and former premier George Papandreou, among others.

Mikroutsikos had composed a great variety of music, from operas and symphonies to film scores and experimental music, recording dozens of LPs and CDs with well-known recording companies, while he was also active on the popular Greek music scene and had written hundreds of songs that set the words of Greek and foreign poets to music.

He had also written music for roughly 100 theatrical productions, including 15 ancient dramas put on at the Epidaurus and Herod Atticus theatres and 16 theatre productions put on abroad, and had personally directed three theatre musicals.

Mikroutsikos had given hundreds of concerts in Greece and abroad, while his work has also been performed at international music festivals throughout the world, by both Greek and foreign orchestras.

He served as a deputy culture minister (1993-1994) and culture minister (1994-1996), and was the founder and artistic director of the International Patras Festival (1986-1990), the artistic director of HMV Greece (1996-2004) and held a number of other prestigious positions in the Greek cultural scene.

A civil funeral service for Mikroutsikos, at public expense, will be held on Monday at the Athens 1st Cemetery at 14:30. The body will be on display for viewing in the hall of ceremonies from 10:30. The family has asked that, in lieu of funeral wreaths, money be donated into an account for unaccompanied refugee children in Moria. (Piraeus Bank GR 07017 1355 0006 3551 3856 0788).