Masters from Crete to Give Concert in Cambridge on May 20

Greece based Ross Daly and Kelly Thoma will hit the road for their third annual New England tour on the back of their new double record “Lunar.” They’ll kick things off in the Berkshires with a workshop and concert at the secluded Race Brook Lodge, tour listening rooms in New Hampshire and Vermont and close things out at the Swedenborg Chapel in Cambridge, on May 20 at 7 p.m. They will tour as a quartet with musicians Tev Stevig and Michael K. Harrist of Çeşni Trio.

Music doesn’t understand national borders. It can’t be so easily constrained. Music grows, it travels, and it resonates. Traditions, sounds, styles all interconnect. The modal music that Ross Daly and Kelly Thoma explore seems to exist outside time, weaving strands from so many parts of the world and combining past, present, and future together in gliding, mesmerizing melodies. “Modal music – music that’s based around tones or modes rather than Western scales – covers a region that stretches from the north west of Africa to west China,” Daly explains. “All of those areas have things in common, and they’re all constantly changing and evolving.”

Daly and Thoma are masters of the Mediterranean lyra, a bowed fiddle that also has more than a dozen sympathetic strings. Daly has spent his life exploring the possibilities and connections in modal music, recording and performing all over the globe as well as hosting the annual Labyrinth music workshop in his home village of Houdetsi on the island of Crete. Daly and Thoma appeared at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 2015 and are regular visitors to the U.S. almost every year. Their new release “Lunar” has spent several months in the top of the Transglobal World Music Chart, rubbing shoulders with releases from Boubacar Traore, Anouar Brahem and Jivan Gasparyan. Jan Willem Broek in subjectivism.nl writes, “This music we hear on ‘Lunar’ is a contemporary expression of the beauty of modality from the various global traditions. These traditions are completely transformed into a new and visionary musical universe. Daly and Thoma know how to take you effortlessly into their grip. Only at the end of this wonderful world trip will you return to reality.”

Details and tickets here: https://rossdalyandkellythoma....