On Breathworks, oud player and composer Thomas Meleteas presents a body of work shaped by modal traditions, collective listening and the sound of contemporary Athens. The project began two years ago, through a series of musical encounters that gradually pointed toward a new ensemble. At its center was Meleteas’ connection with two lyra players, Dimosthenis Karachristodoulou and Lefteris Andriotis, with whom he had worked separately. Bringing them together first appeared as an unusual idea. Soon, the dialogue between two different lyrae became the nucleus of the new music he was writing.

The ensemble took shape naturally from there. Double bassist Giorgos Ventouris and drummer Ektoras Remsak joined the project, bringing a sense of space, clarity, and rhythmic sensitivity to the material. Together, the group formed a sound world where the oud and the lyrae carry traces of eastern Mediterranean memory, while bass and drums open the music toward a more contemporary language.

The compositions on Breathworks are rooted in the modal musical traditions of Greece and the wider eastern Mediterranean. They draw from melodic and rhythmic forms associated with Asia Minor repertoire, Ottoman classical music, and the broader Mediterranean region. Yet the album is not an archival statement. These materials are heard through Meleteas’ own position as an artist living and working in Athens in the 2020s, surrounded by a community of musicians who move freely between tradition, improvisation, and contemporary practice.

At the heart of the record is the relationship between two distinct forms of lyra: the politiki lyra, rooted in the classical music of Istanbul and played by Dimosthenis Karachristodoulou, and the Cretan lyra with sympathetic strings, played by Lefteris Andriotis. Their interaction gives the music much of its inner character. Rather than occupying fixed roles, the two instruments listen, respond, leave space, and support one another. Their exchange becomes a model for the wider ensemble. For Meleteas, composition is closely linked to discovery. Writing music is a way of exploring his relationship to the oud, to the vocabulary of eastern Mediterranean traditions, and to the people and communities around him. The music for Breathworks emerged through that process of play, repetition, and gradual refinement.

Over time, however, the project became less of an individual statement and more of a collective one. The pieces were shaped through rehearsals, performances, and the active presence of the musicians involved. Each player contributed not only sound, but judgment, memory, restraint, and direction. In that sense, Breathworks marks an important step in Meleteas’ work: composition remains the starting point, but the final form belongs to the ensemble.

The title suggests a series of breathing exercises. The music unfolds through repeated patterns, careful movement, and sustained attention. It does not seek to explain a message. It creates a space where the listener can enter into a shared sense of breath, with people, places, and histories that may at first seem distant, but remain connected. Breathworks is a quiet and focused album. It moves between stillness and motion, structure and openness, past and present. Its language is Mediterranean, contemporary, and personal.