Eleni Karaindrou is best known for scoring the films of director Theo Angelopoulos.
Eleni Karaindrou studied piano and theory at the Hellenikon Odeion (Hellenic Conservatory). She also attended history and archaeology classes at the university.
In 1967 with the she moved to Paris where she studied Ethnomusicology and Orchestration and she improvised with Jazz musicians. Then she began to compose popular songs.
In 1974 she returned to Athens where she established a laboratory for traditional instruments and collaborated with the department of Ethnomusicology of the radio.
In 1976 she discovered ECM Records, which was at the time the synonym for in depth research, creative richness and freedom for musical schemes. This was a period of high productvity for her. It was at this time she was introduced to music for the theater and the cinema. She stated that this exposure to cinema was a new beginning from where her own personal style emerged and where the relationship between images and movements created a new space for her expression of emotions.
Her first Soundtrack album was released in 1979 for the movie Periplanissis by Chistoforos Christoforis. In 1982 she won the Thessaloniki International Film Festival and was noticed by Theo Angelopoulos, the president of the committee. They collaborated in the last eight films of the Greek director from 1984 to 2008.
Until 2008 Eleni Karaindrou had composed music for 18 full-length movies, 35 theatrical productions and 11 Serials and Television film. She had worked also with Chris Marker, Jules Dassin and Margarethe von Trotta.
Into her composing Karaindrou brings many elements of music, including the austere jazz of Jan Garbarek and constant hinting at the atmospheric music inherent among musicians in the Balkans. Her film scores are often brooding explorations of deeply emotional themes and are far from being an added quantity; rather, the music is integral to the visual content and endows the films with even greater resonance. Among many awards Karaindrou has received are Greek State Music Awards in 1983, 1987 and 1998 for The Price Of Love, The Beekeeper andEternity And A Day, and in 1992 the Dimitris Mitropoulos Award for Music For Theatre and the Fellini Award from Europa Cinema (Italy).