Interview with Ronan Guilfoyle

Irish bassist Ronan Guilfoyle has taken up residency at the Irish Cultural Center for the past three weeks, where he’s been writing for his coming concert on Thursday 12^th. He will play for the first time with French drummer Christophe Lavergne and Swiss pianist Marie Krüttler. Ronan’s work is his whole life: it is a family affair, a childhood affair, a friendly affair, and it is as much writing as playing and teaching. I chatted to him ahead of his concert, which promises to be full of surprises.

Hi Ronan. First of all, you are about to release a new recording: would you like to say a few words about it?

Yes, I made this new recording last year in New York, with two great musicians, Tom Rainey on drums and Dave Binney on saxophones, as well as my son Chris at the guitar. These all are original compositions, and I think the release should be in April 2015. I’ve been going back and forth between all the different ways to release it – it’s a bit of a hell to organize, to negotiate with the labels… I think it’ll be easier to create my own label and release it that way! But I do want to have an album: in my view you need to have a CD. It is what an exhibition is to a painter: you get to show, in one final product, the work you have been putting for the past weeks, months or years, and you get to decide of the order – which piece you want to show first, etc. A CD is an artistic statement.

What would you like to say about your Guilfoyle/Nielsen Trio (with guitarist Mike Nielson and your brother Conan on drums)?

Ah yes, we played together for twenty years. It was a dynamic that could not be reproduced anywhere else: we were all good friends and knew each other so well. It’s just like with your best friend: you have spent so much time together that you know everything of each other’s lives, you know each other’s ideas on important subjects like politics or religion to the point that you don’t need to talk about these things anymore. Then it’s just a matter of easy, daily adjustments.

Why did you stop playing together?

We never actually said “ok we’re breaking up”. But life happened, and we just drifted apart because we all had different priorities, families, children… it came naturally to a point where it stopped. But last September we performed in Dublin, the first time in five years, that was great. We had a hard time working, because we were laughing so much all the time! When you get together again like that, it is so easy, it makes you remember why you had spent so much time together in the first place.

It’s funny how you describe it all, it really sounds like getting back together with an ex!

But it is! It’s like when you meet with your ex again, all these things are so easy and you see why you had gotten together in the first place; then again, you are also faced again with the reasons why you are not together anymore haha!

Going back in time: how did you enter the world of music?

Thanks to my father. He was not a musician, but he listened to modern jazz and classical music: Ravel, Debussi, Prokoviev, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Mingus, Coltrane… He would play it a lot and was very evangelistic about it – and since there were speakers even in the downstairs room, there was no escaping it! He would sit me and my siblings down on the couch, tell us “you’re the clarinet – you’re the violin – you’re the cello”, and you had better do what he told you; so we would listen to the CD and try to recognize the instrument we had been assigned… It really was a great musical education. Actually the album I’ve released in 2012, Renaissance Man, is a tribute to my father.

When did you start playing and composing for the first time?

I was a late starter, I was eighteen, and I played right away bass guitar. I was self-taught, but I had a great culture from my father. And I soon felt the desire to write music; my very first jazz composition was for a jazz trio, a simple blues piece really. But years later, I used it as the final movement of my violin orchestra in 1998. Here again for composition, I was self-taught since there weren’t any jazz school in Ireland.

I remember once, I was playing Night and Day with older musicians, and I started playing it with the wrong chord. At the end of the song, the pianist asked me “what chord were you playing at the beginning?” I sheepishly answered and then asked which he had played, and he told me “I played what Porter wrote”. Ouch! And he never told me what it was! That was how you learnt in those days: you were told you didn’t play right, but you were never taught how to play right; it was with repetition, practicing over and over again, that you then felt which way was the right way.

But back to composing, I wrote my first classical piece for violin and piano in 1994. I knew classical music from my culture, and so I undertook to study Prokoviev, his score and his recordings for a while before writing my own. For several days, I was thinking “man, that is so brilliant, I just can’t do this”. But then I decided to do my own thing, and not try to write like him. So I accommodated the things I knew to write already: for the first movement I drew from Montuno salsa bands’ influences, coupled to Bartók’s scales; for the second movement I took Indian music’s rhythms coupled to the pentatonic scale, and so on and so forth. That’s pretty much how I’ve worked ever since.

What do you find most fulfilling in the different stages of the whole musical process: writing, playing, listening, or teaching?

Ultimately, I would have to say playing. All the other things are about playing: performance is the goal of all them, the most vital part. I love composing though, it is a very seductive thing – and you don’t have to travel and organize yourself and all of these things that you have to do in order to perform, in order to get to the pleasure of the action. As for teaching, I guess I do have that evangelist streak from my dad. I guess I deem it as a very valuable thing because I myself never had this kind of education, to learn how to go where you want faster. I think school is very important; but it is also a very safe environment… It doesn’t foster the spontaneous side of music, it is always kind of controlled there. Whereas in the real world, you’re just thrown out there and you have to show yourself.

And, there’s something about playing jazz in particular that cannot be reproduced with anything else. It has a strange aesthetics: you’re supposed to play for the benefit of the group, so you really have to listen; but at the same time, individuality is encouraged, and that’s how great figures like Parker, Coltrane and others could distinguish themselves. I think individuality is in danger nowadays; it’s getting harder everyday to stand out. Cultures are being bulldozed, everyone is urged to look the same, dress the same, listen to the same things, use the same technology…

In my view, these are the values of jazz that are under threat, and therefore getting even more valuable. For a young person to engage in jazz and follow this path is already the statement that you don’t want to be like everyone else, have the same job and the same daily life as other people; it shows something, and I’m glad some have the guts to do it.

Which is kind of how jazz was born in the first place: as a sub-culture musical movement…

For sure; it was born from the African American under-class, and White people who played jazz afterwards were likened to that. I guess nowadays jazz is still a sub-culture, but for different reasons that the ones for which it was initially created.

About this coming night: you will play with Christophe Lavergne (drums) and Marie Krüttli (piano). Were they students of yours?

Well it’s more complicated than that. They were students when I met them, but they were not my own. I met Christophe while he was attending a summer school where a friend of mine, who’s married to a French woman, was playing. As for Marie it’s different: I’ve been an external examinator for a Master’s programme in Switzerland for ten years, and when I heard Marie – she was 23 at the time – I thought she was absolutely outstanding. It was not just about technique – she had it obviously – but I was amazed that someone so young could be able to make such great decisions in his/her playing. Many students get better after playing a lot, but she got it already.

It will be the very first time all three of you will play together, on Thursday. What can you say about the pieces you’re going to play?

These will all be original pieces, which I’ve been writing during my three weeks here in Paris. I’ve planned something along the theme of “three”: so our trio will be called Ternary, and the compositions I’ve made consist of three groups of three pieces each; as for the title of the suite, it is based on my struggle to learn French (I have been trying to speak French for a long time but then it’s hard because everyone answers in English)! So the suite is called Grammaire. The first movement is called “Passé-composé” (past tense), and is about my passed history with the French language; the second one is “Présent”, dealing with my three recent weeks here, composing in Paris; and the third one is “Futur”, and has not been written yet: we don’t know the future, so this movement will consist of our improvisation on the spot.

How is performing here compared to Ireland and elsewhere? Do you feel a difference in the audiences?

There is. Some are more attentive and respectful, like in Germany; others are noisier, like in America. It’s actually a shame, because on old recordings of live concerts of great jazz bands and artists like Davis, you hear a lot of noise over the music… Here’s a funny story: Mingus was known for having a certain temper; so during one of his band’s concerts, there were four businessmen on the front that didn’t stop talking. Mingus stopped the band, took the microphone and stepped down the stage, sat at the businessmen’s table and held the microphone in front of them, saying “apparently you have something to say that is more interesting than my band’s music, so please share it with us”!

But as for myself, I would say I’m more comfortable at home in Ireland, for the simple reason that I’ve played there more than anywhere else, so proportionally I’ve had a lot of great gigs there. I also really enjoy India; and last week in Paris, at the Atelier du Plateau, the audience was great, it was definitely a good concert!

What’s your next destination?

Next week I’ll be in Dublin and London, before going to Cape Town, where I’ll be playing with fantastic South African musicians. Music really is an international language. I would say there are three great international genres in music: the first one is jazz, the second is Western classical music, and the third would be rock/pop music. I really appreciate young musicians everywhere; it’s really incredible what these kids can do nowadays. Have you seen the video of the 8-year-old Indonesian boy who plays jazz standards like grown musicians can hardly do? It’s amazing.

I haven’t, I’ll have to check that out! Anything else you’d like to add?

Well if I had one last thing to say, it would be to tell people to support live music! Go to concerts and pay for them, that is the only way. It is a lot of work and money to record an album… but now if you sell 20 CDs you’re lucky. So of course, less and less people get involved in such an enterprise: why bother? It’s so easy for everyone to download now, and we expect things to be free. But if no one pays, in twenty years’ time, will there be new content invented? I think this is the climate change of music. It will be much the same fate as blacksmiths, who were once a very popular and indispensable profession, and who have been replaced by technology overnight. I may be wrong of course, but I would predict that, like high-level craftsmen, good musicians will be fewer and fewer, and more and more expensive, all the rest being a re-hash of what has been done before, played by non-trained musicians. People are contributing to this decline: so people need to financially and actively support music!

This interview appeared on AAAmusic.co.uk.

 

A Night at the Willie Clancy Summer Festival

The night was dark but not full of terrors. On the contrary, this was one of the best moments of my entire life. Everything you fancy in Ireland was there, and more: beer, Irish music, a packed dim pub and laughs with one-night friends. This could be a summing up of that night, though it would not give a fair account of the overall magical feel.

This actually may be the kind of nights rather common to most people – you know, outgoing, happy, normal people. But to me, the whole context made it a time and place that were in perfect harmony, and that will resonate with me until my last breath. You see, I had been traveling on my own in Ireland for a week then, and I had still a good three weeks ahead. I had left my family cocoon to go explore the unknown (it was neither Iraq nor Siberia, but you know, for 19-year-old me it was already a lot for a first lone travel), so I had still not gotten the knack of the whole unsettling traveling experience, how to endure loneliness in a place you’ve never been to before and quickly make it your own.

This Willie Clancy Festival is held annually since 1973 in memory of the piper Willie Clancy and takes place in the beautiful little seashore village of Miltown Malbay, County Clare, in the more traditional West of Ireland. This festival attracts people from over the world for its renowned traditional music Summer School, Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy, the largest of the country. It offers a full program of lectures, recitals, dances, exhibitions and many cultural workshops during that week. So, I ended up in this festival (which I highly recommend) because I was actually carrying out a research on Irish traditional music and its link to collective war memory in the country – so it seemed pretty relevant to go spend a few days over there.

But the night. For starters, that night was also the first time I went into a bar on my own. I plucked up my courage, left my dorm bunk bed and told myself I would have a decent night, even if there was no one I could hang out with in my dorm. Once in the street, I just played it by ear and went into one of the many pubs of the village. I dived into the mass of people already in the Players’ Club, ordered a can of cider, and just listened. It was 7 in the evening, and by 9 the pub was really, really packed. I still wonder how we all fitted in there. But never mind, the music was very entertaining and filling me up with plain, innocent joy.

Then and there I met a little bunch of people, themselves musicians. We started chatting, drunkenly gaily, and we ended up spending the whole evening together. Once we managed to get hold of a booth, they just started playing – me, right in the middle of this, happy and tipsy as ever. Never had I thought I would be at the very heart of an improvised Irish music band!

At three o’clock they left, and I stayed there, in the Players’ Club. You know, people always say how great it is to be able to live and share your experiences with your friends. But you know what? Sometimes it is just as good to be selfishly alone to live them. When you are by yourself, all of your senses are alert, and you really are a 100% in the moment, no “parasite” around you. Of course it also depends on the kind of experience and people you’re with too. But on that very moment, I am just thankful my body and soul were a 100% present, because my memory has now printed it in forever.

The dim light of the pub, in contrast with the loudness of the crowded room’s laughs and cheers, the smell of spilled beer, the damp hotness, the players in the corner playing relentlessly for eight hours… The repetitive and cheerful aspect of Irish traditional music surely played a great part of this transcending night’s feeling. Quite complex to master, it gives the impression of being easily played though. It is a kind of music ever so delightful; its repetitions make it easy to understand it, and to take root in the place and moment you’re in somehow. Recorded Irish music is never half as magical and entertaining as it is live, for it is not made to be a commercial product: it is truly something to be lived.

On that night, everything just made perfect sense. The people seemed to be one with the music, although in a simple manner – no need for an obvious trance or whatever. Transcendence is not just for religious people, pot smokers or Jehovah’s Witnesses. It does not have to be linked to martyrdom or Tibetan-like meditation. I do believe it is also practiced, through another way – and even though they don’t call it that – by down-to-earth people who are just having a beer with friends and enjoying fine music that has been their legacy for generations, in good times and in bad; that very music which is the heart and soul of their country.

This article was written for this blog only.

Live review @ The Blue Note, NYC: Terence Blanchard, Ravi Coltrane + Gerald Clayton Trio

Thursday 8th January, New York

In the dimly lit dark blue room, a cocktail in hand, all of us in the audience were waiting for the band to appear on stage. Groundbreaking names, a legendary venue, a historical jazz festival: indeed the night was promising a lot, and it did live up to the expectations.

Located in Greenwhich Village, NYC, the Blue Note has been a focal point of the jazz world since its creation in 1981, and thus has received the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson, Tito Puente, Chick Corea and many others. The quintet has been playing at the club for five days straight as part of the Monterey Jazz Festival, the longest continuously running jazz festival in the world that also has an educative year-round mission through many local to international tours across the continent.

Here they met for this night: world-renown trumpeter Terence Blanchard and saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, Monterey award-winning pianist and musical director Gerald Clayton, and two rising stars of the jazz scene: Joe Sanders on bass, who has already played with Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter to name only those two; and Justin Brown on drums, a UC Berkeley graduate who has worked with Kenny Garrett and Stefon Harris. At one point during the performance, I was so entranced by his solo that I even forgot to take notes, which just shows how captivating he can be.

The crew arrives on stage, and starts right away with one of Blanchard’s compositions. Shifting measures from duple to triple time ones and fast-paced, this track asserts itself without notice. The trumpet solo Blanchard gives us recalls Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s famous Flight of the Bumblebee somehow, in its mastery of light and seemingly easy velocity.

“Jazz is about being a bad ass motherfuck*r”, Blanchard once said during a summer course at the University of Virginia a few years ago. But he has also recently turned to Buddhism in recent years. This open-mindedness and eclectism transpires in his playing: cocky but mastered, risky but confident and poised – balanced, but unbalanced enough to push limits a little further every time.

Then follows a tenor saxophone solo by Coltrane. Although he does not look too happy with his reed, his free jazz style is enjoyable and is cleverly backed by drummer Brown, whose accents are not too strong or invasive but audible enough to be noticed – in short, a perfect attention to detail.

Clayton’s solo is darker and calmer, like the obscure sea retiring after a stormy weather. The actual Clayton Trio play for a little while – that is, piano, drums and bass – and we can just feel that they know each other well musically speaking. Brown knows very well what Clayton likes and tries to drag him along further, pushes him gently, and indeed it works out perfectly. The symbiosis is complete. The solo gets into a light Latin groove, before they all come back together on the theme, ending in a happy and messy, but coherent hubbub.

After a classical jazz transition, Clayton continues on playing to introduce one of his compositions from his last A Life Forum album. The drums join the piano softly, playing only on the edge of the snare drum at first, giving a rather traditional, rhythmic feel in the same vibe as Avishai Cohen Trio.

Trumpet and tenor saxophone then have a calm but very convincing dialogue, where they echo each other at times, playfully intertwining their arguments. But the musical climax arrives; we can just feel the tension in the whole room – they’re losing their minds in an elaborate Aristocats-like festival, for our greatest pleasure.

What is truly interesting in attending a concert is that not only you get the sound experience – in its most unique form, for it is real at that present time only – but you also get the physical experience. You belong to a physical audience, feeling what it feels and absorbing the music; and you get to observe how the music is done before your very eyes, and how the musicians interact. It is just so enjoyable to watch the band members smile at one another, obviously enjoying their playing together; to notice that Sanders at the bass took off his shoes and is now playing in plain socks; or to see the eye contact Clayton and Brown make when playing together, the latter supporting the former’s solo in the most perfect way possible.

A presentations break sprinkled with anecdotes and humor takes place, in which I particularly appreciate the fact that Blanchard praises Coltrane’s own talent for itself, without making any direct cause-effect link with his famous father. Indeed it would be an easy thing to do, just as many journalists actually do, including myself. But while it may hold some truth, it is important to regard the artist for who he/she is and for his talent and work, before making any quick and handy connections that could incidentally degrade his/her own value as a unique performer.

A gentle bass and drums duo then starts, soon joined by the trumpet and saxophone, all the while very soft and tender. The rhythm begins to take another shape, more undulating on a waltz-like pattern. Tone modulations then add themselves, giving yet another color to the mood before it goes into a coherent inferno: Clayton’s genius in composition can clearly be felt again.

But now comes the time of the Clayton Trio: Blanchard and Coltrane get off stage to let them play. On this light-hearted and uncluttered music, Sanders gives a wonderful bass solo – we just don’t get enough of those! The whole track is very intense and puts you in a good, adventurous mood. Brown using the edge of the cymbals recalls a Japanese music-like feeling, very soothing… up until the surprising energetic end of the track. This was a very convincing showcase of the trio’s creative concord indeed.

And last but not least, the band comes together for a fast-paced track full of give-it-all-for-the-end! solos. We finally get to hear Coltrane playing the soprano saxophone that we’ve been staring at all night long in expectation! He gives a very be-bop, enthusiastic playing – it seems he cannot stop anymore. He really gets carried away in inspiration, giving us a very nice memory to end the concert with. Clayton follows, giving a balanced solo, surprising in its regularity and classic structure but exceedingly splendid. As we all expect in delight, it all ends with a bang like a happy firework grand finale, leaving us with star-filled eyes.

This article appeared on AAAmusic.co.uk.

The Myth of a Post-Racial Society

The American myth of a “post-racial society” has gotten several blows recently. After the deaths of Eric Garner in July and Michael Brown last August and the controversial court decisions relevant to both cases, the African American community of the United-States is angry, as it should be. The concerns raised by these recent events push, once again, for a debate – and actions – about racism in America.

The reality is that the fate of all working class and middle class African Americans is no better than before: there is no proof of any advancement in mentalities and institutions of a less racist society. Although racism knows no rational frontiers, it does prevail – at its utmost violence – in the lower fringes of society, in which people have no social power, nor political representation. This is what recent events have shown.

This statement can actually extend to the whole of the working class, regardless of race. Indeed some say that the black community “makes” these events racial because they’re “just looking for a reason to riot and loot” – and fair enough, statistics are not very revealing, the factors and variables taken into account varying from one source to the other. But to go further, we can also well say that stop-and-search practices, more targeting minorities, inevitably show them more in records, since they are therefore numerically higher from the start in the variables – a long-known problem making statistics to be treated with great care.

Here is a sad truth that statistics could not explain more intelligently, as told to me by Nick, a young ex-NY policeman who preferred not to divulge his last name: “I decided to leave my job with the NYPD because the department’s command was going in a direction that I really didn't agree with. The New York Police Department has 40,000 officers… it's huge… and I was just a number in their system.”

“I felt like a lot of what they are doing violates the rights of the people and I no longer felt like I was "protecting and serving" the people of New York. I felt like a storm trooper from Star Wars: we were doing nothing but abusing the citizens. I was told to stop people at random and pat them down for weapons or drugs, especially minorities, even if they did nothing wrong.”

“I spoke to my Captain and my superiors about how it didn't feel right and I was just told "do your job, or someone else will". It felt terrible leaving, but my integrity as a person is more important than any job I will ever do. I used to feel like I was doing something good and noble… America is changing, and it isn't good.”

We should not have had to go as far as having murders to see that the American police forces have a problem of dealing with the population. It is by looking away for too long that such tragic events have been able to occur in our democracy – and by ignoring History. For racism is a social construct, and as all social inventions and practices, it can change through time. Remember that black lynchings were happening not so long ago.

There was also a time where the Greeks of America were prey to racism and harassment for their “Oriental” features and ways of living: back in the 1910s, at the time of the large wave of immigration from Southeastern Europe on the one hand, and from the rural slave American states on the other, Greeks and blacks had more in common than one would think today. 

Greeks back in the days were not considered white, but swarthy if not black. The frustration borne out of the bigotry they endured led some Greek-Americans to found the AHEPA, the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association, which could be considered the equivalent of the black NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The AHEPA, created in 1922, fought stereotypes and abuse of Greek immigrants and Americans of Hellenic descent, and helped them assimilate into the American society.

Greeks were notably politically and economically harassed by the Ku Klux Klan which, as is too easily forgotten today, was extensively powerful throughout Northern America at that time. In 1990, the AHEPA and the NAACP even worked hand in hand in Georgia for a law banning the wearing of masks by KKK members, in order “to protect the public from intimidation and violence and to aid law enforcement officials in apprehending criminals”.

Greeks have now become white and, although having their little cultural eccentricities (for those who like to exhibit them), they are accepted and considered as well-assimilated in the American society. Race, as a concept, is social, and race evolves. Race as applied to African Americans has also evolved through time: there is no more slavery; laws for more proportionality have been enforced in schools and universities, and there is no more institutionalized segregation as in the time of the Jim Crow laws.

This does not mean that we are in a “post-racial” society though – otherwise such reforms would be useless. Blacks (and women) are still under-paid, and black children do not have the same opportunities from the beginning of their life as white children, starting from school districts. Of course the same divide is true for working classes and higher classes regardless of race – a concept not addressed enough in our country, where indeed sometimes we tend to blame racism too much and not enough social disparities.

In any case, merely saying that our society is “post-racial” does not make it so – the very fact that we feel the need to say it proves that it is still a concern. This is an illusion reinforced by the fact that the American president is black, but does that mean that the African American community is better off than before? Politics remain politics, Congress remains Congress, interests remain interests, and a President remains a President, with all its power and constraints at the same time. Whoever our President, whatever his color, America remains a deeply divided society, both socially and racially. Let us just hope that no more murders will have to occur before we address these issues wisely.

Published in The National Herald, December 25, 2014, "Viewpoints" section p.13

Thassos, the Aegean Emerald

Forget Athens and the Cycladic islands: GO THASSOS! You'll find this remote piece of heaven easy to fall in love with.

Being part of the not-so-touristy North-Eastern part of Greece, the Macedonian island of Thassos is not very well-known although conveniently close to the coast. You can either cross from Keramoti, near Kavala International Airport, or take a longer boat trip from the harbor city of Kavala which is worth the visit - and where I have tasted the best frappé ever, I cannot emphasize that enough. A 2,5-hour bus ride from Thessaloniki will take you there easily.

Thassos is the Northernmost island in Greece, making it a green spot remote from the beautiful but sun-dried Southern landscape. Instead, Thassos offers the same clean and clear-blue sea together with dense and varied forests: although in recent years the island’s woodland has suffered some forest fires, it is still known for its pine trees – what a wonderful scent all over the place – and shrubberies near rivers and lakes.

Again, spring is the best season to go there as the nature then reveals its magic at its full potential. What is more, a heavy tourism from East Europe, Russia and England can be felt during the two hottest months of summer; but in underrated Thassos, it is easy to enjoy the warm climate of June or September while being the only stranger on the island: I was literally the first and only resident of the whole hostel I was in. 

Once landed in the island capital also named Thassos, or Limenas Thassou (“harbor of Thassos”), I take the time to go to its little and very well arranged museum. Going through the History of this tiny Empire in a nutshell, it tells how Thassos was known for its fine products such as nuts and white marble – a great stone and marble wall had been encircling the harbor against intruders. But most of all, Thassos was famous for its fruity wine so particular that the wine god Dionysus’ head was engraved on Thasian coins.

But the island was also a major commercial and political spot owing to its large gold and silver mines. It naturally attracted the interest of colonizers: Phoenicians, Greeks – from the Cycladic island Paros or Athens’ central power –, Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans... Not that Thassos complied easily. It sometimes even fought quite honorably for its independence; but as often times with islands, rebellions were crushed by the main power of the day.

Coming back out in the sun, multiple options are open to me: go into the ancient agora right next to the museum? Wander a little further and have a nice meal in a restaurant along the historical harbor? Take a walk up into the small and pretty pedestrian streets and bushy hill to end up on top of the city’s ancient theater, offering a splendid view of the sea and the city below? Or go the beach just at the end of the port, where you can swim in clear-blue waters beneath shadowy pine trees? Tough choice.

Going further South, on the Eastern coast lies the “Golden Beach”: a whole kilometer of white-sanded beach against a backdrop of mountainous forest, waiting for towels to be spread, sand-castles to be built and photos to be taken. There are many hotels and camping places nearby – both denaturing and convenient. It is the most famous beach of the island, but Thassos is surrounded by beautiful spots and walks anyway, thus offering plenty of alternatives.

There are other historical sites spread throughout the island as well: on the South-Eastern part of it, the Monastery of Archangel Michael sits on the road between the villages of Astrida and Alyki, with a beautiful view of the sea; nearby is the worthwhile archeological site of Alyki, on the coast also named the “Holy rock of Thassos”; and on the South-Western coast, Limenaria offers the earliest settlement to have been explored, with remains from the Middle and Late Neolithic.

My tenant back in Limenas Thassou, who has been absolutely lovely and helpful, advised me to go to Prinos’ market when going back by the Western side. Taking place on Monday mornings, it is in fact a regular street market, but as everywhere else in Greece it is indeed something worth the trip. Whether it be for the low prices and juicy, sundrenched fruits, or just for the ambience with people chatting and sellers barking their deals, the Greek market is

 never a boring experience.

Back in the capital to take the last ferry – there won’t be any seagulls following the boat at that time, too bad – I enjoy a last walk along the harbor. Even at night the water is warm, and so clear that I can see the rocks on the bottom with my own shadow projected by the distant city lights.

Article published in The National Herald on October 10, 2014