Into the Labyrinth:

Complex Compositions and Traditional Melodies Unite Musicians from America and Greece

Sunday, October 28, 2012 at 7:00 PM

Village Homes Community Center 2661 Portage Bay East, Davis, CA

$20 in advance, $24 at the door Call; (530) 867-1032 for reservations & info. for reservations & info or online at the top right corner of the page

Revered Crete-based composer-performers Ross Daly and Kelly Thoma of Labyrinth join exploratory string duo Teslim (Kaila Flexer and Gari Hegedus) in a variety of live concert programs and musical workshops throughout California, October 14-28, 2012.

When Bay Area violinist and composer Kaila Flexer, one half of Teslim, first heard Ross Daly on the radio, she immediately changed courses to find his recordings at a local store. With her Teslim collaborator and fellow devotee of Eastern Mediterranean music, Gari Hegedus, she marveled at Daly’s musical intensity and fluidity, the freshness of his approach and the integrity and depth of his transformational, multi-cultural artistic vision.

Although of Irish descent, Ross Daly defies ethnic classification. From a very early age, Daly discovered that music was, in his own words, "the language of my dialogue with that which I perceive to be sacred." This dialogue eventually led him to studies and collaborations with many great masters of the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. Widely traveled, Daly has been based on the island of Crete for decades. Universally recognized as one of the foremost experts on the island's rich musical traditions, he established the Labyrinth Musical Workshop in the village of Houdetsi, a unique educational institution and ethnic instrument museum staffed by international master musicians and dedicated to the study of the world’s modal music traditions.

After several years of studying and performing Ross’ compositions here in the U.S., Flexer and Hegedus dreamt up a project to collaborate with Daly and his musical partner, Kelly Thoma. Both Daly and Thoma are masters of the lyra, a pear-shaped bowed instrument found on Crete, to which the enterprising musicians have added an additional fleet of sympathetic strings. Uniting as composers and collaborators, the quartet of players of multi-ethnic string instruments began to craft and explore music that springs and departs from the traditions of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Ross Daly, Kelly Thoma & Teslim will be joined by Miles Jay on Bass. They invite listeners to join them on a journey of unexpected musical pathways and crossroads. Inspired by the diverse facets of traditional music of Greece and the Near East, these performers offer routes to a core sonic experience that defies easy geographic categorization.