“Following my studies at the Tirana Conservatoire in 1982, I worked for three years as Music Director in a remote town in Southern Albania near the border with Greece. The first-hand experience I had from working with folk musicians and listening to ancient songs seems to have had a lasting effect on my creative conscience. There are no quotations from folk-music here or in any other work of mine, but resonances of that sound-world [...] are now subconsciously becoming part of my own music. These qualities are incorporated in the overall musical idiom and can be clearly heard in these works.” – Thomas Simaku