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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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