I leave home at five in the morning. Even central Athens seems serene at this hour, and it's still cool, although the daytime in early June is already too hot to bear. I walk a few blocks carrying my overnight bag to find a taxi. A few empty ones pass me by. Some stop briefly, windows wound down, the drivers casually leaning towards me to hear my destination. The ritual is to shout the name of the place, and they will pick you up if it suits them. "Sto aerodromio!" - To the airport. A few drivers shrug and drive on before one takes me. He already has a passenger that he'll drive first to another suburb on the way. At this time of the morning it's much easier than usual to find a taxi, which normally needs luck and intuition. If there is a bus or train strike you can wait desperately on the sweating, frantic roadside for a long time. Whenever I need to be somewhere on time, especially catching a plane, there is a real possibility that I won't make it. Fortunately, the new airport opened recently, and there are now frequent fast and reliable buses.

Today, I do get to the airport on time and tell myself that the most difficult part of the journey is over. I join up with my four fellow musicians for the short flight to Thessalonica. Arriving in Greece's second largest city, we begin gathering carts, baggage, and instruments. The heaviest is Angelina's tsimbali, a Russian dulcimer, which looks like a table with strings and weighs as much. My own instruments are light: two Ganassi recorders in C and G, and a low whistle in D, all made by Michael Grinter.

We're headed for Skopje, the capital FYROM (the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia). Our driver is waiting for us. He grabs some of our baggage and walks us over to his small, old van. No air-conditioning and the back windows don't open. For the next four hours, despite the extreme heat and the fatigue that threatens to overcome me, I am entranced by the unfolding landscape. In Greece the newer generation have moved into the cities to work, and large areas of land have been neglected. The stone terraces of the hilly and mountainous countryside are crumbling, the water channels for irrigation dry, and the olive groves untended. After we cross the border, although this is a much poorer country than Greece, the land is noticeably better tended. It seems that more people have stayed in the villages to look after the farms-difficult and poorly paid labor. The countryside here is well looked after and lush. Layers of mountains and ancient trees. The rivers have a milky blue-green hue I've never seen before. It is beautiful.

I begin thinking about the pieces we're going to perform tonight. I have a feeling that we won't have time to rehearse or even warm up before this concert, so as I look out of the window I play through as many of the pieces as I can in my mind. For a while I've been developing my aural learning, and it is becoming more fluent, but when I don't have my instrument in hand I still get confused about some notes and phrases. I have been playing with this particular ensemble, Labyrinth, for only a few weeks. My first performance with them was a little over a week ago just outside Athens in Nea Makri, followed by a week on the islands of Karpathos and Rhodes at the multicultural music festival called Sea Songs 2000. I arrived in Greece from Australia two months prior to this concert, following the dream I have held in my heart since I began concentrating on traditional Greek music with an Australian group called the haBiBis six years previously in 1994. With support from the Ian Potter Foundation, I'm now here to study with the famous folk musician Ross Daly and the Greek clarinetist Manos Achalinotopoulos.

I have learned most of the Labyrinth repertoire sitting with Kelly Thomas, who plays the Cretan lyra, an instrument related to the violin. You play it upright, resting on or between your knees, stopping the strings from the side with your fingernails. One of Kelly's bows has bells attached that jingle rhythmically as she plays. Her method has been to play me a new piece once or twice. Then I begin repeating small sections after her or with her, slowly building up to the whole piece, which we then play together many times. I usually learn several pieces in one sitting, but the work is difficult and exhausting. The hardest part is the inner struggle: I find it hard to believe that I can remember all this information. One part of myself trudges on, patiently remembering, while another part is screaming, "No, stop, this is impossible!" After a few days, I am amazed what I am capable of doing when I let go of this fight.

After I learn a piece, Kelly might say, smiling sweetly, "There's another piece that I think would go very nicely on the recorder."

"Hmmm." I'm trying to sound calm, relaxed, and eager to learn more, but I'm sure I'm not coming across that way.

"Maybe you're tired," she suggests.

"Oh, no, no." What a liar I am! Still, the patient part of me really does want to go on, to stretch myself and see what's possible. "Actually, I'm more concerned about you. Aren't you getting bored, waiting for me to learn these pieces?"

"No, it's very good for me. I have to know them in a different way to be able to do this." And we begin the music again.

I have taken the precaution of recording all the pieces we've worked on, as I didn't want them sneaking out of my memory. This has helped speed up the process and saved Kelly a lot of time sitting and working with me. I have already learned hundreds of compositions this way. The ones that I have kept with me have become part of me. The idea of this aural method is to never forget anything and to be able to recall at a moment's notice any one of the thousands of pieces that have become part of you over a lifetime. This internalized repertoire is your guide and inspiration, which also teaches you how to use the modes for improvising. The musicians who live within this living system embody the continuation and memory of the music.

I imagined that I came to Greece to learn more about Greek music and Kelly teaches me many pieces from Crete. I already knew a little about this style. In 1992 I had some lessons in Melbourne with a Cretan lyra player and singer Michalis Melambiotis. At around that time, Giorgis Xylouris was living in Melbourne. He is from a family of well known Cretan musicians and nephew of the revered Cretan singer/lyra player Nikos Xylouris. It was a nice coincidence that later on I was able to participate in performances and a recording with him in Crete. The music I am learning is modal rather than harmonic: that is, based on melody. Chords and harmonies are infrequent.

Kelly and Ross are also teaching me pieces from neighbouring cultures that have modal traditions, particularly from Turkey. When I hear people discussing the names of the modes in this ensemble it is usually based on the Turkish system. In my time in Greece we meet and perform with visiting musicians from Turkey, and we later travel to Bursa, Turkey for a concert.

We finally reach the outskirts of Skopje. The first things I notice are many high-rise apartment buildings of red brick-a visual shock after the skeletal white sprawl of Athens, and the more beautiful clusters of white buildings on the Greek islands. After a few wrong turns we arrive at the guesthouse where we will spend the night. It is cool inside, and my bed looks so inviting. But we have only three-quarters of an hour to shower and get ready to leave for the concert. We are all bleary from the long stuffy drive and early start. The day is pulling us along as we hurry in and out of the two showers. Then we are taken out in a couple of taxis to eat lunch. We drive through mountains to a restaurant inside a cave. Inside a cave? Perhaps I am dreaming and will soon wake to the relentless Athens traffic and the bells of the countless Orthodox churches. But it's true: lunch in a cave with stalagmites and stalactites, water dripping down the stone walls, a gaudy grotto full of icons, spotless white linen, and impeccably set tables. The cool white wine is good and refreshing, and we sit around laughing and joking, eating the delicious food with our expansive settings of silverware. Lunch in a cave: it is a dream.

Too soon we need to move on. My comfortably full belly tells me it's siesta time. I have already become accustomed to taking my main meal at lunchtime and then settling in for a perfect hour of refreshing sleep in the hot afternoon. But right now there is work to be done. We arrive by taxi at a parking lot nestled in mountains and surrounded by forest. One of the organizers tells us we'll be walking "a short way." We share out the instruments. They are heavy, so I imagine that it could not be far. We walk along a narrow path, sometimes only wide enough for two people, so we walk mainly single file. The path is laid with small stones and feels ancient. One side is sheer rock going up; the other slopes down to the cloudy, aqua river. We walk under stone arches and through narrow tunnels, occasionally glimpsing large holes yawning in the rock-leading, I imagine, deep into the mountain. It is magical, and we become silent in awe. Yes, we are exhausted; yes, we are carrying heavy bags; but this magic eases all that. We have entered a place outside of time.

The organizer walking ahead of me turns around to look at me, then he starts to laugh. "Yes," he remarks. "The first time I walked here my face was like that."

"Like what?" I ask.

"Like this." And he opens his mouth and drops his jaw, eyes wide in astonishment. I laugh at his imitation and quickly try to seem a little more blasé about this beauty.

He nods and smiles. "It really is a special place. That's why we chose it for these concerts. Wait till we get there."

Eventually, we turn a corner and come to an opening, a gorge with cliffs reaching up and a lake on one side. In front of us is a small stone Orthodox Church. As we pass it we come to a large stone cafe with wooden balconies next to a flat, open area in front of the lake. This is where we'll be performing. We have only a short time for a sound check. But first we sit down to drink Greek-style coffee-a tiny cup of thick dark liquid, washed down with glasses of fresh mountain water. We begin taking out our instruments, tuning one by one, then all together. It is quickly becoming cold as the evening settles, and I regret not having brought a jacket to cover my bare arms.

All of the stringed instruments take a little more time to tune than usual. First they were in the cold plane, suddenly in a very hot car, and now out in the cool evening. During the sound check, when we change pieces Angelina keep re-tuning a note or two, so she can play the microtones in this music with us. Sometimes these microtones change within a piece; then I notice she will tune the strings in other octaves differently to make the necessary adjustments. The exact pitches of these microtones can differ from area to area and group to group in the Middle East, according to personal preference and training. I am still struggling to play them exactly with this ensemble. So I listen very carefully to the way Angelina tunes them, checking to make sure that the pitches I am using work with the ensemble.

A few months after the concert I'm describing, I studied some Classical Turkish Ottoman music with a Greek nei player, Giorgos Simeonidis, while I was living in Athens. I was (as usual) playing the recorder in our classes together. I loved learning from him, and we would spend hours analyzing and dissecting music.

"Hmmm. In Rast [one of the modes like a major scale] you are playing the major third quite flat. They did that in Turkey about fifty years ago. Now they play it a little sharper almost like a Western third you might say, but a hint flatter.

"Is this way a little better ?" I would ask, struggling to find a pitch that matched his.

Or again : 'In Ussak (another mode), you have that second degree flattened quite nicely for ascending, but coming down it should be even lower. Very uncomfortable: a sound you cannot really bear. It insists on moving down to the tonal center."

And another time: "One saz [lute] has its moveable frets here, and that is fine. Then you perform with another group and someone else will like that note somewhere else." I have already found this to be true: with Labyrinth I have to play like they did in Turkey "about fifty years ago"!

All these microtones add another dimension to pieces. The practice opens the doors in my mind to this incredible musical system that relies completely upon melody and rhythm. It has not been easy finding fingerings for these notes that work well and are stable. I am moving away from cross fingerings and trying to use as many "shaded" notes as possible, making the adjustments by subtly raising and lowering my fingers from the second and third joints. Most recorder players limit the movement of their fingers beyond the knuckle of the first joint, simply covering and uncovering the holes, or half-holing them. But the next two joints are also important. With them you can train your finger to lift precise distances from the finger holes very quickly and accurately. This is useful for semi-tones and for playing diminuendos and crescendos in tune; it is essential for the fast practical use of microtones. It also aids in very fast finger movement and allows for more variety and color in ornamentation. The technique is difficult for me. I have spent years working on it and I am only slowly finding it practical even now. This is the way that nei players and Indian bansuri players finger their notes. I can feel that it suits this style of music, so I keep working at it.

We finish our sound check. Hundreds of fireflies come out, glowing and darting about. They contrast with the steadier glow of the many candles that have been placed around the tables against a long stone wall at the edge of the lake. People are arriving, perhaps a thousand in all, and I wonder how they managed to find this place. They settle around the tables, drinking cool drinks, reclining on blankets under the trees or sitting on chairs closer to the stage area. We start to play. A thin crescent moon hangs brightly on top of the cliffs. I hear gentle sounds on the water and guess that some people have taken boats onto the lake to listen.

Today we are performing modal music from Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Greece, as well as compositions by Ross Daly. Ross, of Irish descent, has lived in Greece for more than 25 years. He grew up in the UK, North America, and Japan, and has spent his life traveling in India, Central Asia, the Middle and Near East, Greece, and Crete, studying the classical and folk music traditions. Ross plays many instruments, including the lyra, oud, laouto, and rebab. From his base in Greece he teaches and performs around Europe, the Near East, Australia, and North America, recording, producing, and bringing musicians together. Studying with Ross I concentrated on traditional Cretan music. Many of its melodies are quite simple and often repeat short phrases three or four times. The magic of these pieces comes in the freedom you have to embellish the repeated phrases and the number of times you can play them. Through embellishment you can also learn to compose in this style. It is a living tradition. Good musicians naturally make up their own pieces that contribute to this living flow. In traditional music, we often do not know the name of the composer, although we may-it is just not as emphasized as in the Western Classical tradition. Some of the pieces we play could be thousands of years old, passed on from musician to musician; others were composed yesterday.

The concert ends and we pack up, talking to the audience and among ourselves. We leave this enchanted place and are taken to a café where we can relax and drink - but not too much or I would be asleep! The New Age Tea Shop (Kosta Sahov 9, 91000 Skopje, Macedonia ; +3891/203-854) is owned by one of the organizers of the New Age Festival that we have just performed in. It is another beautiful place, closer to the city and a little warmer than the higher surrounding mountains we just came from. We sit outside in a circle around a large table under a canopy of green, with flowers twining above and around us. A strong sweet smell of jasmine fills the air. Many people sit with us, smiling, asking questions, making sure we have food and drink and are comfortable. Kelly and Ross go to gather instruments, and Kelly brings my recorder to me. It is a gracious gesture and slowly we begin to play again. I sit close to Aggeliki Xekalaki, who plays the bendir, a round frame drum played with the hands. She holds it up in the air, in its usual playing position. Sometimes I see her face, and other times I see a large ivory circle, like a moon, sitting on top of her neck. Other people sit very close to us, eyes closed, couples with arms around each other, sitting back. This is the real concert I came for-intimate, not distanced by sound equipment, feeling a deeper connection with a smaller group of people.

The long day is coming to a close. Around three in the morning I arrive in my bed at the guesthouse and fall into a deep sleep. Tomorrow we begin the return journey at nine. This time I will sleep in the van, and probably on the plane as well. It has been an exhausting day, but I will always treasure it to remind myself of why I keep on playing this music that I love so much.