Thodoris Ziarkas

"There is a person who collects sand. This person travels the world and – on arrival at a sea shore, the banks of a river or a lake, or a desert, or wasteland – gathers a handful of sand and take it away." 

Italo Calvino's essay Collection of Sand is the inspiration for Thodoris Ziarkas's debut trio album, which embarks on a sonic storytelling of miniature landscapes, each revealing the variations found within the grains of sand. The compositions, with their minimalist nature, draw a parallel journey to an anthology of sands and explore a contemplative space where minimal differences unfold with quiet intensity. 
  
For Thodoris Ziarkas, these pieces were a practice of how to be receptive to the momentum within the creative process. They are a personal diary or a ritual—a way of being able to reflect on and give these encounters new forms and shapes. 
  
Collection of Sand features three musicians who are close collaborators of Ziarkas in recent years. Oliver Dover on the clarinet approaches the compositions in a unique way, combining his passion for the Eastern clarinet while improvising freely over the landscapes created by Ziarkas's bass. The percussion of Gizem Altinordu drives the rhythmic patterns with meditative pulsations, allowing the music to breathe while leading to new directions. The multi-instrumentalist Nikos Ziarkas plays the Cretan lute in one of the pieces, bringing his versatile and explosive musicianship to enhance the ensemble. 
  
Together, the four musicians balance between the composed material and the open improvisations, connecting as though walking on a soundscape of miniature dunes. 
  
The album draws another parallel to the work of visual artist Cadhla Kennedy Ko, who created photographs in a collage manner using film double exposure techniques. Each photograph is a result of an aleatoric process that involved chance encounters of the artist. This process inspired Ziarkas, who found similarity in his own way of working and connected each piece to one of Cadhla Kennedy Ko's pictures. 
  
Collection of Sand was recorded live in the intimate setting of the tiny St. Mary's Tower in North London in the beginning of 2019 and will be released by GBD Records on the 22nd of January 2024. 

released January 22, 2024 

Composed by Thodoris Ziarkas 

Gizem Altinordu: Percussion 
Oliver Dover: Clarinet / Bass Clarinet 
Nikos Ziarkas: Cretan Lute 
Thodoris Ziarkas: Double Bass / Lyra 

Recorded by Tim Thomas at St. Mary's Tower, Hornsey, London on 7/02/2019 
Mixed by Tim Thomas 
Mastered by George Botis at DADA Studios, Athens 

Photography by Cadhla Kennedy Ko 
Artwork by Thodoris Ziarkas