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Written in fRoots issue
383, May 2015
KELLY THOMA
7 Fish
Own label, Kelly Thoma 2014 (2015)
Kelly Thoma’s instrument is the version of the Cretan lyra
designed in 1991 by her partner Ross Daly and made by Stelios
Petrakis and others, which has from twelve to twenty-two
sympathetic strings that surround the sinuous, keening energy of
its three bowed strings with an alluring shimmer of reverb.
She’s well known as a very fine player
indeed, and she’s joined by a team of the top players, including
Ross, who frequent their Labyrinth modal music workshop in
Houdetsi, in a rich unison and harmonising blend of strings -
lyras, cello, oud, double bass, daouli, çumbus, saz, yayli tanbur,
tarhu, nak tarhu – and snappy tombak and bendir percussion.
It’s a gorgeous, exciting journey of her
shapely compositions, deeply rooted in Cretan and other
modal-music traditions, full of melody and of paces and textures
that shift and slither.
As the title suggests, there’s an aspect
of piscatorial inspiration, not directing the listener but giving
each track a mental peg. In Dolphins (OK, not a fish –
there are actually eight tracks) a long melody weaves through fast
ripples; S (the form of a swimming fish’s body) is
drone-underpinned, tense, mysterious, floating, with sudden bursts
of flickering propulsion, moving out into a dark sea over a
surging slow pulse of deep cello, tarhu and bendir and ending in
the wavelets of the shallows.
www.kellythoma.com
© 2015 Andrew Cronshaw
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