BRANDON — For all lovers of world, roots and acoustic music, Brandon Music is delighted to welcome Ross Daly and Kelly Thoma, on Friday May 31, at 7:30 p.m. They will be performing Cretan and Mediterranean music and contemporary modal music as part of a quartet with Tev Stevig, a Boston based guitarist and multi-instrumentalist, who specializes in a variety of plucked string instruments from the Balkans, Greece and Turkey and Michael K Harrist, musician, educator and producer who is also from Boston. This is Daly and Thoma’s fourth annual tour of the U.S. It comes on the back of their new and top-rated double album “Lunar,” which was voted No. 1 by Global Music Network on the Best of 2018 World Music Charts.
Ross Daly
Daly is an acclaimed world musician who specializes in music of the Mediterranean lyra, a bowed fiddle that also has more than a dozen sympathetic strings. Although of Irish descent, he has been living on the island of Crete for over 35 years. He has traveled the world, mainly in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, studying various forms of local music traditions. In 1982 he established a unique educational institution called Labyrinth Musical Workshop, in Crete. Here seminars and “master-classes” are conducted every year with some of the greatest teachers of traditional music from around the world. Labyrinth is now recognized as the leading institution in the field of education of modal and traditional music in Greece today attracting hundreds of students from all over the world. A master musician himself, Daly has also released more than 35 albums of his own compositions and of his own arrangements of traditional melodies collected during his travels.
Kelly Thoma
Thoma was born in Piraeus in 1978. Since 1995, she has been studying the lyra with Daly. In 1998 she started traveling with him and his group, “Labyrinth,” participating in concerts in Europe, Asia, Australia and the U.S. Being a member of “Labyrinth” and the Labyrinth Musical Workshop she has  played with many eminent musicians such as the Trio Chemirani, Omer Erdogdular, Derya Turkan, Zohar Fresco, Pedram Khavar Zamini, Dhruba Ghosh, Ballake Sissoko, Erdal Erzincan, Mehmet Erenler,Yurdal Tokcan, Ustad Mohammed Rahim Khushnawaz and many more. She participates in many of Daly’s projects: Ross Daly Quartet, Seyir, Iris, White Dragon and has performed in Carnegie Hall, Theatre de la Ville, Queen Elizabeth Hall, San Francisco WMF, Rainforest WMF, Womadelaide, Rudolstadt and many major venues and festivals around the world.
She graduated from the English Literature department of Athens University as well as from the “Rallou Manou” Dance School.
She has released three albums of her own compositions: “Anamkhara” (2009), “7 Fish” (2014) and “As Τhe Winds Die Down” (2018).
Friday’s concert begins at 7:30 p.m. Concert tickets are $20. A pre-concert dinner is available for an extra $25. Reservations are required for dinner and recommended for the show. Venue is BYOB.
Call (802) 247-4295, email [email protected] or visit brandon-music.net for more info.