Dimitris Isaris

Athens, 2009: the violin inside a pop band

OtherView was put together in 2009 by Vasilis Koumentakos and Isaris with the singer Krystalia, and Greek reference pages list Isaris as a member from the formation through to 2018 — by far the longest single stretch of his working life. The group traded in pop-dance built for radio and club play rather than anything instrumental: their studio album So Long arrived in 2010 with ten tracks, and they also featured on the 2009 reissue of Michalis Hatzigiannis's album 7. In 2012 they took the Video Clip Dance prize at the Mad Video Music Awards for I'm The One, which was also nominated for Mad Radio 106.2 Track of the Year.

The line-up moved around him. Krystalia left in 2012, Elena Tsagkrinou fronted the band from 2013 to 2018, and Koumentakos has remained throughout. Isaris's own portfolio site, last maintained around 2017 and 2018, points at the parallel life that ran alongside the records: violin sets with OtherView at Box in Athens and appearances with Melisses, enough nightclub work that fans tagged him the violinist of Athenian nightlife. The classical grounding sits underneath all of it — conservatory study followed by postgraduate composition at New York University.

Trailers, theatre and a violin duo

The same portfolio describes a composer taking commissions wherever instrumental music was needed. He wrote original music for festival trailers, including the Aegean Film Festival and Colour Day Festival in 2017, for a 3D projection-mapping show billed as The Enchanted Blackpool, and for a 2017 romantic comedy series broadcast on the Greek channel ANT1. Theatre credits are listed as Mediterranean Voices, The Parade and Jordan; there is a documentary score, Tides; and there are collaborations with the producer Consoul Trainin, one of them featuring the vocalist Eneli.

He also co-founded DuoViolins with Giorgos Gaitanos, a two-violin project aimed at originals and arrangements rather than function-band repertoire, though it worked the Greek events and destination-wedding circuit. Its discography includes the album Obsession, made with Consoul Trainin and the vocalist Steven Aderinto, and the release Take Me To Infinity. Across the band years, the screen work and the duo, the consistent thread is a melody instrument carrying the lead line where a singer would normally be — which is precisely the thing he has since made the whole act.

Dubai, a guitar, and a number that keeps getting repeated

Isaris is now based in Dubai, and the pivot that changed his standing was narrow and specific: he started recording his own readings of Turkish melodies he had followed for years, playing them himself rather than arranging them for others. Promoters and Turkish press repeat one figure without variation — more than 116 million views worldwide inside a single year, with the strongest response coming from Turkey itself. The reach was built in short-form video rather than through radio or a label campaign.

His current billing describes cinematic instrumental music with Mediterranean influences and a contemporary acoustic sound, performed on violin, guitar and other instruments, with the pitch resting on arrangement and delivery rather than on a vocal. The practical effect is unusual: a musician who spent the 2010s as a sideman and jobbing composer in Greece is now a named headliner on Turkish ticketing platforms, selling to an audience that knows the songs better than he does and is listening for what he does to them.

The 2026 release run

The recorded catalogue is almost entirely dated 2026 and released one track at a time. The most recent is the single Senin, issued on 25 September 2026. The rest of the listing sets originals such as Levante and Stellar Sparks against a steady run of interpretations: Sevdiğim, Elfida, Sarmaşık, Hasretinle Yandı Gönlüm, Ağlar mıyım? Ağlamam and Babam from Dudaktan Kalbe, alongside Soltane Ghalbha and Khodahafez, which reach past the Turkish repertoire into Persian material.

The titling is blunt about what is being sold. Tracks carry suffixes like Guitar Cover and Guitar Intimate Version, which makes the arrangement itself the product rather than a reading of a song that happens to be instrumental. No album has been announced, and the release pattern — frequent singles, cover-weighted, tied to the material that performs on video — matches how the audience was found in the first place.

Where things stand, autumn 2026

The summer ran through the Greek resort circuit. On 27 August 2026 he played a Sunset Sessions date at Parelia, the beachfront restaurant at W Costa Navarino in Messinia, scheduled from 19:30 to 23:30 and described by the hotel as a journey through Greek and international standards built on expressive guitar melodies and storytelling — a long, loose evening set rather than a concert with a curtain time.

Two dates are currently on sale through Biletix: İzmir on 16 October 2026 and Ankara's Yılmaz Güney Sahnesi on 7 November 2026, both priced from ₺1,350. The larger booking came on 4 October 2026, when Habertürk reported that Isaris would play Zorlu PSM's Turkcell Platinum Sahnesi in Istanbul on Saturday 9 January 2027 at 20:30, promoted by Piu Entertainment, with tickets through Biletinial, Bubilet, Biletix and Passo. Piu lists the Istanbul night under its acoustic programming.

That sequence — a municipal cultural hall in İzmir, a city theatre stage in Ankara, then a major Istanbul room four months later — is the clearest measure of where he has got to. Greece remains the summer trade; Turkey is where the ticketed career is being built.

The shape of the show, and what is not yet published

Everything announced so far is a seated, single-artist acoustic set. No support act is named on any of the current listings, and neither the promoter nor the venues have published a running time, an interval or a setlist. The programme is described in the same terms each time: original compositions set beside his own arrangements of melodies the room already knows, carried on violin and guitar, with the promoter's language leaning on elegant arrangements, emotional weight and holding a concert hall at the volume of a small room.

Worth noting for anyone weighing a ticket: as of mid-October 2026 no press reviews of the Turkish shows have appeared, so the only accounts of what a night delivers are the artist's own videos and the promoter's copy. The İzmir date on 16 October is the first of the run to be tested in front of a paying hall.