TESAURUS

Musically, Mikola Ptashnikoff began with clarinet and bayan (Russian accordion) lessons but his environment encouraged him to pursue other interests: guitar and rock music. He learned to play the guitar by himself as if just for fun. Furthermore, he chose a career that has seemingly nothing to do with music, a career of cabinet maker. He studied cabinet making at a college in Bobruisk, Belarus. Who would say that he would be ever able to combine it all in one? In five years Mikola became an apprentice of a famous Belarusian guitar maker Vladimir Milun and later entered the Belarus rock scene with a self-made guitar.

Cooperation with Vitaut Martynenka, the famous Belarusian music journalist, stimulated the band's professional growth. It was him who encouraged TESAURUS to ground the chosen genre (rock, nu metal) on Belarusian poetry (initially, it was the poem "Jerusalim" (Jerusalem) by Ryhor Baradulin, the outstanding Belarusian poet). The experiment was successful and the band decided to translate all the songs that had been composed from Russian into Belarusian with the help of Vitaut. Meanwhile, Vitaut Martynenka who is the author of the Belarusian version of Henryk Sienkievicz's novel "Quo Vadis" wrote lyrics of his own that reflect his poetic understanding of Christian morals. These lyrics became a part of the band's repertoire. At that time a demo CD with Armageddon's live performance at the BASowiszcza rock festival in 2002 was released. The songs from that CD were played on the local radio radio, were covered in mass media the local newspapers ("Muzykalnaya Gazeta" (Music Newspaper), "Perekhodny Vozrast" (Awkward Age), "Znamya Yunosti" (The Youth Banner), religious editions).

In 2004, the band released its debut album "Adnova Tesaurusa" (Renewal of The Thesaurus). It was recorded at Parochia Records in Baranovichi, Belarus. The band performed several times at the BASowiszcza rock festival in Poland. They got acquainted there with the prominent Polish rock band "Armia" and got in touch with the organizers of other rock festivals to the west of Belarus. One of these festivals is a major European ecumenical rock festival "Song of Songs" where TESAURUS performed in the star program in June, 2004. "TESAURUS" so impressed the Polish audience that next morning a picture of the band was published on the front page of the major Polish newspaper "Gazeta Wyborcza" with circulation 500,000 copies.