Kelly Thoma Transcript

Kelly Thoma:

But I was so enchanted, not only from the sound or from the music or the composition. For me, it was more impressive to see this human in front of me being so aligned with himself. The music, the instrument, and himself were one. The unity of the moment, this was so striking to me. That moment was the moment that I said, "I am so jealous. I want to do the same." I felt this jealousy as a child that wants to play with the same toy. Just out of the blue, I said to myself, "I want to do the same, and I have no idea what this is."

Leah Roseman:

Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians, with Leah Roseman. Kelly Thoma is a Cretan lyra player, and this episode has beautiful music and a wide-ranging conversation, including Kelly's personal story of becoming a musician after training as a dancer, Cretan culture, the influence of Ross Daly and the Labyrinth Musical Workshop, which he founded in 1982. Kelly speaks so eloquently about her love of music and collaboration. I really appreciate this opportunity to have in depth conversations with my musical guests.

Please use the timestamps if you want to jump to any topics or music, but I hope you'll take the time to listen to the whole episode on your favorite podcast player or the video on my YouTube. The transcript and all the links to Kelly's projects are linked in the show notes on my website, leahroseman.com. Did you know that I'm an independent podcaster? The link to support this podcast and my YouTube channel is in the description. Every dollar helps me cover the costs of this huge project. Thanks so much. Kelly Thoma, thanks so much for joining me today from Crete.

Kelly Thoma:

Exactly. Hello. Very nice to be here with you. We're not together, but we are somehow.

Leah Roseman:

I was looking at pictures of where you live with the beautiful, huge mountains in the background. It looks quite incredible.

Kelly Thoma:

Yes. Well, they're not so huge if you compare them to your mountains, they look like little hills. In the village where I live, we have a, we call it mountain, but it's actually a very, very small mountain called Juktas. We're very close to this mountain, but we do have taller mountains. In Rethymnon, in Chania, we have very big mountains, which are full of snow right now. Although we have 20 degrees today, they are full of snow and they stay in snow until the summer. It's actually very interesting to swim in the sea on Crete and look at the mountains full of snow. It's very special.

Leah Roseman:

You play the lyra, and when I mentioned this to some colleagues, they said, "Oh, you mean the Greek lyre?" I said, "No, no, completely different."

Kelly Thoma:

There is always this confusion. There is always this confusion with people that are not familiar with this instrument. It actually has the same name, lyra, also in Greek, we call this in Greek lyra, and here, lyra. It is exactly the same word, the same name, but it refers to a completely different instrument. The ancient Greek lyra, as we have it depicted or painted on the wall paintings, it's something like a harp. It has absolutely nothing to do with the contemporary, the Cretan lyra, which is a bowed instrument and it has nothing to do with it. But this is something that happens a lot in musicology, let's say. There are many common words for instruments that are completely different. For example, tamboura be from the same root, there are instruments which are percussion instruments and plucked instruments. It comes from the same root, but they are completely different, completely different family.

Leah Roseman:

Yes, I have run across that with that word and have wondered about that. I was looking into the Mongolian horsehead fiddle, which is another bowed instrument that... It's the same technique that you use, where you're making contact with the back of your finger. I know you've generously agreed to let me use some of your previously recorded music so people can really hear the beauty of the sound, but for right now, if you could just show us basically the technique for those watching the video. For those who are listening, Kelly, if you could just describe it so that they can picture it in their mind.

Kelly Thoma:

There is a lot to describe on this strange creation here, the structure. This specific lyra, which I play, is actually a modified version of the traditional Cretan lyra, the traditional instrument. This version was created by my teacher, Ross Daly. His name is Ross Daly. It was created more than 30 years ago, and it was created basically for his own needs. He never expected that this instrument would become popular or that other people would like to play it, but it has become very popular.

I don't know how many there are, how many have been constructed until today, but I know a lot of people that play it and a lot of people that are creating new music on it. In a way, it has started its own tradition, this instrument, it is traditional. If we think that the word tradition actually means transferring the information from generation-to-generation or from person-to-person, in a way, it is definitely a traditional instrument. There are a lot of similarities to the traditional Cretan lyra, but a lot of new elements, which I will describe.

Actually, I have a traditional Cretan lyra here, as well, to show you to see the differences. Already from the shape, you see the differences. I'll try to hold both of them. They are both, as we say, pear-shaped. They have this pear-shaped body here. They have the soundboard. They are knee fiddles, as we call them. The instrument is vertical like this and the bow is played horizontally like that. But this instrument, the traditional Cretan lyra, has three playing strings tuned in fifths, only three playing strings. The modified instrument that Ross created has the three playing strings, as well as sympathetic strings, the number of which varies. It can be from 8 to 22. Actually, as many as you can fit on the head of the instrument. The sympathetic strings are thinner strings, which are located under the basic strings, and they resonate with the notes that you play on the three playing strings.

The other differences between the traditional lyra and this lyra are the tuning pegs. You see, these tuning pegs are long, whereas these ones are... You know these mechanic tuning pegs of, I don't know, a banjo, I think? Completely different. This means that the instrument is sitting on a totally different way on the body of the player. You see, the pegs are sitting on my chest like that, so the position of the instrument is completely different than this. This is much closer to my body, which means that the position of my left hand is also a lot different.

The most characteristic thing about the technique of the Cretan lyra is the fact that we do not press the string like we do on a violin. We don't play with the tip of our fingers, but we play, as you described earlier about this other instrument, we play with our nails. We push the side of the string with our nails. You don't have to push very hard. It's not a very strong push, because if you do push it too hard, then the string bends. You have to find the right amount of pressure so that the sound is clear.

These strings, of course, are very, very tight because as you see, they are not touching the soundboard. They are above the soundboard. They're very tight. We use cello strings. There are special strings for lyra, as well. I use cello strings, which are quite thick. They have a warm sound. We change the tonality or we change the notes by putting our fingers next to the string and just pressing the string, but not to too hard. We change the notes like that. Of course, as we said, it's a bowed instrument, so we use a bow, like this. There are also bows with bags on them for rhythmic dancing. They adjust bass or parts of the wood, you have a percussion instrument playing along with the lyra. Unfortunately, the sound of this microphone is not so good, but I will just play just to show how we change the tonality.

I don't know how this was, but the existence of sympathetic strings, so the sympathetic strings, what they do is they prolong, prolong is the word? They extend the sound of the note that you play, because these strings are tuned in various notes and they extend the sound, creating a natural reverb, in a way.

Leah Roseman:

At this point, we'll probably insert one of your pieces. You do so many collaborations with so many wonderful musicians. You mentioned Ross Daly, and I'm sure we'll talk about him. I know you've done some duo things with him. Is that something we'd be able to use, one of those or-

Kelly Thoma:

Yes. Yes, yes. There are videos or there is a lot of music. Actually, we have created an album called Lunar, which is a duet album. We can definitely play some of this music.

Leah Roseman:

It's beautiful, I've listened to it, the sound of both of lyras together. This first musical selection is from a 2017 concert with Ross Daly in a duo performance of Kelly's composition, Anamkhara, on Cretan lyras. It's excerpted from a concert, and the links to the original videos for all the musical selections in this episode are linked in the show notes on my website, leahroseman.com.

Maybe this would be a great time to tell the story of how you first heard the lyra.

Kelly Thoma:

Yes. Talking about this story, telling this story, it's something I've done so many times, but the truth is that it somehow gives me strength to talk about it. I don't know. We musicians and artists, in general, we very often tend to question ourselves. We go through periods that we don't know what we are doing. We make music and we don't know who wants to listen to it, why am I here? All these questions. But when you go back to the beginning of all this, it somehow all clears out and it's all clear again. I will tell you the story once more. I've said this to so many friends of mine, but really, it's quite interesting. Maybe it's interesting only for me, but if all of us, all artists, try to remember this first time that they were enchanted by this art that they are immersed into until today, maybe it will have the same result to them, to understand why and stop questioning. You just go forward and don't.

What happened with me is that I grew up in a family that we did not have music. Nobody in my family was a musician or an artist. Actually, my younger sister was playing the accordion at school, and she was the musician in the family. I was a dancer. I did classical ballet, contemporary dance for many years, so this was my thing. This was the thing I was good at. Music was not at all something that I was interested in to play. I was listening to music, I was listening to... Because I was studying classical ballet, I was listening to some of the Western classical music, but only the music that was created for dance, so I didn't have any knowledge about the composers. To be honest, it was a bit superficial, my knowledge or my listening of this music.

I was mostly listening to American pop music because this was what my friends were listening to. I was listening to any kind of music that was around at the age of 13, 14, 15. I was going to parties and listening to music. At that time, we had Madonna, Michael Jackson, these kind of things, but I didn't have any strong connection to all that. It was quite superficial. I was listening to it just because my friends were listening to it. But I bought albums, I had my collection and all this. When I was 15 years old, I happened to listen for the first time to one of Ross's compositions. This made a huge change in my life. It opened a whole new world for me.

The way it happened was quite accidental. I remember, I was 15 years old and I was coming back from my English class, walking back home. It was, I don't know, September or October, so the balcony doors were open in my house. I was walking, going to go inside my house, and the balcony doors were open, so from my house, there was music coming. Beautiful, beautiful music, which was, for me, it was listening to music for the first time. 15 years old, for the first time, I listened to something that clicked in my heart. I listened to that and I just stood outside my house, and I was listening to this thing that I had never listened before. I couldn't recognize it. I couldn't associate it to anything that I had listened before. It was afterwards, a few weeks after, I figured out that it was a little bağlama, cura saz, a little plucked instrument called cura, and a percussion, a bendir.

It took me months or maybe a year to figure out exactly which were the names of this instruments, actually, and what this music was exactly, what it was. But that day when I went in my house, a little bit stoned in a way, I went into my house and I asked my sister, who had the music on, I said, "What is this music?" She said that it was a compilation cassette that a friend of hers had sent her from Paris. It was a compilation cassette with many different compositions. One Cretan song, one song from Yugoslavia, this one of Ross, but there was no information. It was a pirate cassette, of course. This, we used to make a lot back then. It was a pirate cassette with no information of what was its track, so we had to find out what was that.

I asked my sister to call her friend in France to ask her what it was. Back then, we couldn't just Google things, we didn't go to Spotify, so we had no idea. This was a magical period for me. Months after that, after I discovered this music and I listened to it a lot and I discovered, too, other kinds of music, as well, and I still didn't start to play the lyra, I remember that I was listening to music in a totally different way than I am listening to it now. I was listening to music without having any association in my head about what is this instrument, where is it from, who is playing? This freedom of listening to music without having any connotation, any ready material, is something very precious, which unfortunately, I cannot go back to.

As a musician, I feel I lost this ability, being like a baby listener. It's something you lose. Of course, you gain a lot more. You gain a lot of knowledge. You listen to music in a totally different way, maybe in a more mature way, but mature doesn't necessarily mean better or worse. It's a different way, a different way. Anyway, to cut the story short, after my sister called her friend and she said that this is the music of a man called Ross Daly. She said that he's an American musician, that he lives in America, and he loves Greek music and he played Greek music. I knew nothing about all this, so any little information, I just believed it.

Ross is not American. Ross is Irish. What I heard was not Greek traditional music. It was a composition of his own, the genre of which we call today contemporary modal music. Anyway, but any little information for me was precious. After that, I went to record shops and asked for more information, tried to find any piece of Ross, and slowly, I found out that he's Irish and that he actually lived in Athens, where I lived.

Although it was very difficult back then, because as I tell you, we didn't have easy access to all this information, no internet. Our only source of information was actually newspapers. I'm talking about '93, '94. We only had newspapers back then, and if we wanted to see where, or magazines, where an artist is performing, we would read it on the news. I tried to follow him, and slowly, I found on the newspaper, actually, no, I saw a poster on the street that he was performing in a small neighborhood close to where I lived. This is the first time I listened to Ross playing live. One year had passed already, in which,

during which, I was listening to his music a lot. I had found a lot of his LPs and listened over and over and over this music, which I didn't know much about. I didn't know if it was traditional, if it was new composition, if it was from Greece, from India, from Timbuktu. I don't know. I had no clues. That was great. That was really great. I think that this helps a lot. The magic around all these discoveries in a way. The first time I went to one of his concerts, then in Moscato area, somewhere very close to the area where I lived, he played many instruments that night. It was actually him. He was really sitting in the middle.

Two more musicians were playing with him. One percussionist and a legendary percussionist from Iran, Djamshid Chemirani. He plays the zarb, the goblet drum, traditional goblet drum from Iran. The other musician was a student of Ross, who is a very acknowledged musician, one of my big heroes in music, Sokratis Sinopoulos who played the kemenche, the Turkish lyra. Again, with a different lyra. Ross was in the middle, Sokratis was on the right and Djamshid was on the left. It was the first time that I saw these instruments in real life. I saw them from close, first time. Of course, first time to listen to this music live. I had only listened to this on my LP. The impact was, I can't describe to you what the impact was that night. For me, it was a revelation, another big revelation. The day I listened to this first piece of Ross's music.

I remember, I was watching Sokratis, the lyra player, he was a little bit profile, a little bit tilted. How do you say... Tilt it like that. I could see that the lyra... I could see the shape of the lyra from the side. I saw that the lyra was thin. The lyra is not deep. It doesn't have a deep... You see, it's very thin. It was the first time I saw that because I had only seen it facing in pictures, in photos. I was so shocked. I didn't imagine. I didn't even know what the instrument looked like. That night, Ross played many instruments because he's a multi-instrumentalist. He played the baglama, the rabab, the Afghan rabab and saz. Yes, the baglama, the Afghan rabab and the lyra. I think, these three instruments.

When he played the lyra, I was... Again, I cannot... I don't know if I can find the words, but I was so enchanted. Not only from the sound or from the music or the composition. For me, it was more impressive to see this human in front of me being so aligned with himself. The music, the instrument and himself were one, the unity of the moment. This was so striking to me. I said, that moment was the moment that I said, I'm so jealous. I want to do the same. I felt this jealousy as a child that wants to play with the toy, the same toy. Yes, just out of the blue, I said to myself, "I want to do the same." I had no idea what this is.

So far, I never had the will to play an instrument. Never, but that moment, watching Ross playing the lyra, especially the lyra, I said, "I want to do the same." Of course, I don't know why I said that because to say I want to become a musician, for me, it was... it made absolutely no sense. I was a student at school. I was studying dance very seriously. That was my dream. My plans were to become a dancer or a dance teacher. At that moment, I was sure. Absolutely sure I wanted to do that. I don't know why.

Leah Roseman:

It's fascinating to me because I'm like a lot of western classical musicians that we just... we start when we're a child and we just follow this narrow path and we pursue music, but I've met so many guests through this series, like yourself, who just heard an instrument and just switched their life often as young adults or later in life. It's fascinating to me. I'm sure your discipline as a dancer helped you with the discipline that you needed.

Kelly Thoma:

Yes, yes, yes. Because I was... When I started having music lessons with Ross, I was already 17 years old, which is, for an instrument player, it's quite late as a classical musician. You know that your training starts much earlier, right? Although I didn't have any stress about... Because I didn't plan to become a professional musician. That was not my plan. I didn't have any stress about developing a very good technique or being very good at it. I just enjoyed it so much. I enjoyed it very, very much. I practiced a lot because I enjoyed it. I didn't practice it a lot because I thought I had to make up for the way... lost time. I didn't realize all that back then. I was so blind from all this joy of being able to reproduce the sounds that I had fallen in love with to reproduce even badly.

It was so amazing for me that I didn't have time to think about virtuosity and all this. All this came much later when I started performing, when I started meeting other musicians and see how useful is virtuosity, because it's just useful. Virtuosity is not music, necessarily. Virtuosity is a useful tool to play music afterwards, but always, there were things that I found out later. As you say, because I was very disciplined as a dance student, I had to be because classical dance and contemporary dance, which I studied for many, many years since I was six years old, I had created a muscle for discipline, which is very useful actually in music. That's something that I took for granted that I have to study. I have to repeat a lot of things, these movements on the lyra so that I create a muscle memory on my fingers to do it way, as I did with my body when I studied dance.

If I didn't... If I had not studied dance and if I did not have this discipline, it might have been more difficult for me to just dive in this huge ocean of music and know nothing about how you can progress, but I knew how you can progress because I had seen that happening with my body, with dance. If you repeat and if you have a little method, even your own method, find the way that you manage to learn faster or more constructively, you will reach a better result and a better result and better result. It did help me a lot, dance did.

Leah Roseman:

It's interesting what you're just saying, Kelly, about you have to find your own way because I was thinking, you teach a lot now, are you good at helping students find their way to learn that works for them?

Kelly Thoma:

Teaching has been a very big school for me. I have... I'm studying as a student and I'm also studying as a teacher. Every teacher will say the same, I think. I'm sure every teacher will say the same. Me, yes, I do have my own method of teaching myself. Very unorthodox method, I would say, that I'm not sure if it fits everyone. When I started teaching, I realized that there is no system that fits all. You can propose your own way. You can try to project the information and try to give the information to the person that you have in front of you in one way or two ways or try different ways, but the way they will receive it is their own job. Teaching and learning is 50/50 procedure. Teacher cannot make miracles. The student has to do the other half of the way and they have to meet.

Because I studied music and I still study music without written notation, without the score, I teach the same way. I teach through a lot of repetition. I love repetition. It's my meditation. I love a lot of repetition. What I think happens is that you have different levels of study. Of course, different levels of teaching. In one level of teaching, you have to repeat and create memory in your hands. This is not music. This is gymnastics. Okay, this is not music, but you need this stage. If you don't go through the stage, you will waste a lot of time later. You might be mature musically. You might want to express many things, but you don't have the tools. If you don't go through the stage of building a certain technique. You have to. It's actually nice. It's enjoyable to build a technique. For me, it's always been very enjoyable to play, to repeat and repeat and repeat and create exercises out of melodies.

When I was studying with Ross, he showed me a lot of exercises, but unfortunately, I didn't do them back then. I was bored, because I wanted... when you are very enthusiastic in the beginning, you want to learn new pieces and learn new pieces, but what I did and what I still do is that I extracted parts of melodies, difficult parts or parts that were interesting and create exercises out of them. Now, I realize I should have done more of these exercises because now that I teach, I show a lot of them to my students and I see the results. The method, there is definitely not one method. I don't have one method. I have some anchors, some guidelines, which I use because you have to. Otherwise, you will be lost. I have some guidelines that I use, but I definitely see every student as a totally different case. Of course, every student is different.

After you teach or you learn technique, you have to find the right stage where there is a good balance between studying the technique, trying to become better and better in moving the fingers, basically. Because what is the instrument? The instrument is just wood and metal. These are fingers. Okay, we move them, but the thing is, where is the music? This is not music. Where is the music? You have to find the balance slowly, slowly to study all this technique, but see beyond that and start to listen to the music and listening to the music and digest it and become one with the music will finally project in your playing. What helps you in that is, I think listening to a lot of music, having some people that inspire you around you. It's very, very important.

For me, it was very, very important to have Ross and then all these musicians around Ross, all these teachers in Labyrinth, Labyrinth Musical Workshop where I basically studied, all these musical personalities or human personalities. Because all these are wonderful people as well, they're not only musicians. All these personalities have inspired me and have affected me and my playing and who I am immensely. How is it a good word? I don't know, but a lot, a lot. Yes. You have to find the right balance. Not to become very strict and all the play technique. On the other hand, not just fool around. Yes, let's play a little bit music, la, la, la, la, la, la. You have to have both to go on a path that you have discipline with joy. Not discipline to punish yourself. Discipline with joy and music as something sacred. Something you go to. You want to reach it, but you know that you will never reach it.

This is another... I think it's a very beautiful feeling to know that you will never reach this sacred. There is no end. You will never go there, but you are walking towards it. This is something, this is my motivation, basically.

Leah Roseman:

Yeah, that's beautifully said, Kelly. I definitely agree with you about that. Hi, just a quick break from the episode. I'm an independent podcaster. I really do need my listeners help. Please consider buying me a coffee. The link to my Ko-fi page is in the description. Every dollar helps me cover the costs of this huge project. Thanks so much. You have so many beautiful musical collaborations. I was interested to talk to you about the cellist.

Kelly Thoma:

Yes, Mayu. Mayu Shviro. Mayu Shviro, yes. Mayu is a combination. She's a mosaic of... She's a perfect mosaic. She's Jewish. She's Israeli. She's from Israel, Jewish. Her mother is Japanese. Her father is Iraqi, and her teacher was Russian. She has the discipline of a Russian teacher. Very, very disciplined. She has the kindness and the simple aesthetic and how can I say this? Genuine kindness of Japanese culture and the Mediterranean Iraqi fun. She's fun. She's kind and disciplined. She perfect.

Leah Roseman:

This is a duo performance with cellist Mayu Shviro recorded in 2019. The original video on Kelly's channel is linked in my show notes.

Kelly Thoma:

She's a very, very high level musician, very high level. She first started with classical Western music. She became a very, very virtuoso cellist. When she was, I think, 17 or 18, she started being interested in Eastern music. She studied Azeri music in Azerbaijan with a teacher on her cello, but really, if you start asking me about all these collaborations I have with various musicians, I can talk more about their personalities than about how they play. For me, Mayu is basically a wonderful person. You can listen to it in her music. This is the result. The music is the result, but mainly, she's a wonderful person, and this is very important.

Leah Roseman:

I've listened to some videos you've done with her in different formats like, duo, trio, with percussion, quartet. Is there any of that we'll be able to share with this episode with your permission?

Kelly Thoma:

Yes. Yes. We have made... Yes, duet. I don't know if there is a video with duet. Yes, there are some rough videos. Unfortunately, we haven't managed to play in public a lot with Mayu as duet. We have a very big repertoire together because when we meet, we just play a lot. We have a very, very big repertoire, but we didn't have the opportunity to present it officially in many venues. I think, we will in the future. There are a few videos on YouTube. We can choose either as a duet. We have a trio with Bijan Chemirani. Bijan Chemirani is one of the sons of Djamshid Chemirani, the month that I saw that first in that first concert of Ross 30 years ago. We have, also, videos with Mayu. I guess as a duet, we have a couple. As a quartet we have with big orchestras. We can choose something. We'll see. We have a lot.

Leah Roseman:

This is Flutter, one of Kelly Tomas compositions with her quartet. This video was shot in the Labyrinth Musical Workshop in Crete in 2019. The video with all the credits is linked to my show notes.

Leah Roseman:

Yeah. I love the sound combination. It's so great. And it's beautiful with the percussion too. It's very inspiring to me, just the way you use the different textures. So, thanks. Hopefully, you'll have some new listeners after this.

Kelly Thoma:

Yes.

Leah Roseman:

And your quartet, the TOKSO?

Kelly Thoma:

TOKSO, yes.

Leah Roseman:

Quartet?

Kelly Thoma:

TOKSO.

Leah Roseman:

Yes. And you have some upcoming projects with them?

Kelly Thoma:

Yes, yes.

Leah Roseman:

As well?

Kelly Thoma:

Yes. With TOKSO, we've been working together for 15 years. We are celebrating our 15th year this year. We started out as girls, and we very often now we say, Ross says, "Oh, you have a tour with the girls, eh?" We're not girls anymore, but we were girls back there. It's been 15 years already, I can't believe it. We have played so much music together. They're all so fantastic. Each one is such a special personality. And what made us work all these years together is the fact that the chemistry is so good between us. It clicked so well from the beginning. The instruments, the combination of the instruments, also the frequencies, they work so well together, that even from the beginning, 15 years ago when we first met, we found out that this will really work very well.

First time we met in, I think, 2008, was the first year. And we were together only for four or five days, and we had to create a project to present in a festival in Oslo. And in four days, we created so much material, so much repertoire, it was unbelievable. It's me with a lyra, a cello, a classical cello, but she is grown in, but she plays, she's very, how do you say? She plays different kinds of music as well. She's classically trained, but she's been exploring other kinds of music, that's why she's very open. And she also works without the score. This helps me out, because I don't use score, and it's very difficult for me to work with musicians that only work with scores because we are not on the same page. I mean, they are on a page, and then me, no page. Yes. Sometimes it's difficult. With them, although they are all classically trained and they read music prima vista, in TOKSO, we work without notation.

The other musician is also a Norwegian, the cellist is Norwegian. The hardanger fiddle player, the Norwegian violin player, Anne Hytta. Hardanger fiddle is a violin with the sympathetic strings. It's the traditional fiddle of Norway. And the fourth girl is Eleonore Billy from France that studied the Swedish nyckelharpa. Nyckelharpa is a traditional Swedish instrument with keyed plectrums and a bow. So we all use bows, and that's why we call this ensemble TOKSO, which means bow in Greek. And we play our own original music. We play our own music, which is influenced from the various traditions that we have studied. It comes from us or, I don't know, from our experiences or from our backgrounds, but they have elements of the Cretan music, Swedish music, Norwegian, a bit Celtic, or from nowhere, from Mars, I don't know. It's we love it. We love playing together.

Leah Roseman:

For the TOKSO Quartet, we've included part of a beautiful compilation video from a few different songs. I encourage you to check out their recordings, which will also be linked in the show notes.

And my regular listeners know that I'm a big fan of Bandcamp, and TOKSO has two albums at the present time on Bandcamp that are really, really wonderful. I'll link to that. And also, people that haven't heard all my episodes might be interested. You've mentioned a few instruments that I've featured. So my very first interview was with a nyckelharpa player, Kirsty Money. And I've had a kamancheh player and a gadulka player. So some of these instruments that have come up, I've already featured, because as a violinist, I've always been fascinated with all the different, many, many bowed instruments there are in the world, and I'll continue to feature different bowed instruments.

Kelly Thoma:

Well, the gadulka is very similar to the, especially to this area, the Cretan music, that we use the sympathetic strings, because it has sympathetic strings as well. And the shape of the instrument is very much like the gadulka. But in gadulka, if I remember correctly, the first string is played with the nails like we do on the Cretan here, but the other two are played not by pressing. You don't press the string all down to the sound board, just the touching with the finger tips. It's a pretty unique instrument and unbelievable music, very beautiful music, Bulgarian music.

Leah Roseman:

Yeah. Yeah. So that musician is Hristina Beleva, who-

Kelly Thoma:

Ah, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Leah Roseman:

And then we had a, you know of her?

Kelly Thoma:

Yeah, I know of her. Yes, of course.

Leah Roseman:

Yeah. So your mother was Cretan, although you grew up in Athens?

Kelly Thoma:

Yes.

Leah Roseman:

And now you've lived on Crete for many years. Can we speak about the culture? Because Crete was a very interesting crossroads, culturally, for many years, different empires and different from the ... I've never been to Greece, so maybe you can just speak to the history a little bit?

Kelly Thoma:

Yes. Yes. Crete is a quite unique place, I find. It doesn't look like, it doesn't feel like, other islands of Greece. I think it has a very special, okay, it might resemble, a little bit, Kasos and Karpathos, which are on the east part of the island, but Crete, for example, in comparison to Corfu, is a different country, completely different. Corfu is an island in the Ionian, Island, Greek Island, but completely, completely different. And as you say, because there was the Ottoman Empire, as well as the Venetian times, there is a, yes, an interesting combination of the east and the west, very interesting combination of these two.

Crete is mostly, although it's an island, it's a very long and thin island, we have the sea all around it. And you would think that people are seamen or fishermen or, no, they're mostly in the mountains. Most of Cretan culture is big in the mountains. So most, how can I say, economy's are the shepherds and agriculture in the mainland, not so much around the sea. Around the sea, what happened is tourism. And this is, I think, because people in the past were trying to protect themselves from the pirates, from the sea, so they all gathered in the mainland, and this is where they created most of their culture.

And in the past, like in the '40s and the '50s, fathers had property in the mountains and by the sea. So the sons would inherit the good land, and the daughters would inherit from their fathers the bad, let's say not fertile, land by the sea. But what happened a few decades later was that tourism became so fertile on Crete that the sons-in-law, the ones that married these daughters, created the very big fortunes, because Crete today is very touristic, a very, very touristic place. Unfortunately, with very bad aesthetics as well, in most parts of the island, especially by the sea, especially the north part of the island that was more developed. Unfortunately, there is a lot of bad aesthetics, a lot of touristic areas that have nothing to do with the culture of Crete.

There are, of course, some really nice areas, but the real Crete, the culture, the good food and the nature, I find that it is mostly in the inland of the island. There are some beautiful areas in the south, coastline in the south, which have not been developed so much touristically. The music of Crete, the Cretan lyra is not as old as most people think. The oldest Cretan lyra we have in a museum in Athens is from 1743. That is only 18th century, 18th century. Before the lyra, they used to play reeds, not flute, little reeds, and percussion instruments, barrel drums, like small ouds.

The lyra and the laouto came much later. The laouto is the companion instrument of the lyra. It came even later in the 19th century, I think, maybe the beginning of the 20th century. They are very contemporary instruments, and we don't really know exactly from where they came, because lyras, we still have in various parts of Greece, but the first record of lyra, the first archive of lyra, was in the 10th century in Thrace, in North Greece, very, very far from Crete. And I don't know if the Cretan lyra came from this lyra, from the Thracian lyra, or from the east. I don't know. There were many bowed instruments, knee fiddles in the East anyway. To be honest, I don't know. There has not been much musicological research on Cretan music, not official musicological research. What else do you want to know about the Cretan culture? The food is great.

Leah Roseman:

Yeah. I was interested in the dialect, because I understand the dialect is one of the oldest, closer to ancient Greek.

Kelly Thoma:

It is.

Leah Roseman:

And do you speak the dialect at all?

Kelly Thoma:

In some villages here, when they speak between themselves, older people, and when they speak fast, there are a lot of words I don't recognize, but I can understand. So I don't know if it's a dialect or if it's an idiom, because there is a difference between these two. A dialect, I think it's like a different language. Like it is, for example, Cypriots in Cyprus, I don't understand anything. It's Greek, but it's a completely different dialect. I think that the Cretan language, at least the one that you hear in the village today, is a small idiom. So you understand, but there are different words, just a few different words. So I live here and I understand it. I've gotten used to most of this vocabulary. There are still words I don't recognize, but somebody from Athens might have a hard time understanding. Yes.

But I think I have an accent sometimes, because I speak to a lot of Cretan people, and maybe have an accent, because, you know, you get it like a disease. If you speak all day and you listen to this all day, like music, I think that I get an accent when I speak with the Cretan people. But I don't, no, I don't use these words, because I didn't grow up here, and it doesn't come naturally to me. But in this, you're right, these words, a lot of these words come from the ancient Greek language. But in language of Cyprus, the Cypriot language, and the language of Poros, the Black Sea, where they also speak a Greek dialect, it's really, really influenced, there are a lot of words and grammar from ancient Greece, much, much more than the Cretan dialect or idiom. Also in Cretan language, we have a lot of Turkish words, a lot. We use a lot of Turkish words, which have been Cretanized, you know, that we've changed a little bit, but if you see the root, it's Turkish, from the Turkish occupation, Ottoman occupation.

Leah Roseman:

Kelly, I was wondering about the food. Are there traditional dishes you could describe for us that you love?

Kelly Thoma:

A lot. We'd have to make another episode about it. As I said, Crete is an island, and one would think that the fish would be, or seafood would be, some of the main dishes on a Cretan table, but it's not true. People here eat a lot of meat, a lot, a lot of lamb. They eat pork as well, but the local meat is lamb, a lot of lamb. There are a lot of shepherds with very good lamb. So if you are vegan or vegetarian, you will have a hard time, unfortunately, on Crete today. Because in the past there was a lot of, also today, there is a lot of very good vegetarian food.

And people used to eat meat very rarely, because it was not something that only rich people could eat meat often, but today, unfortunately, people eat a lot of meat. They make a special way to bake it. They call it antikristo. It sounds like the antichrist, but it has nothing to do with it. Antikristo, in Greek, means one facing each other. This is what it means, antikristo. So they have a fire in the middle, and they put the lamb standing like this around the fire, like a tent, and this is the traditional way to cook meat. So bake a lot of meat, they have a lot of very good cheese and yogurt and dairy products. And there's a lot of very good vegetarian food, but people nowadays tend to put the focus on meat. So if you go to a Cretan house, if you don't eat meat, they take it maybe not as an insult, maybe is a strong word to say, but they feel that they feed you only if you eat meat. If you only eat the vegetarian, beautiful, very, very nice delicacies they have, they feel that they haven't fed you.

We have a lot of horta, we call it. They're vegetables, just green vegetables the wide, from the village wide. In the winter, we have fantastic, many, many different kinds of these horta greens. And we have also a lot of the Turkish versions of the recipe, Cretan versions of Turkish recipes, like for example, dolma. Yeah, many, many, many things.

Leah Roseman:

Okay. So you've traveled a lot, both with your TOKSO and with Ross, and I know you've played major halls all over, and you had a pretty memorable trip when you went to Australia the first time?

Kelly Thoma:

Oh, yes.

Leah Roseman:

Was it the WOMADelaide Festival or a different one?

Kelly Thoma:

First time, no, no WOMADelaide, no. First time was many years before that. The first time, I think it was 2001. WOMADelaide was 2010. The first time was 2001, when we first went to Australia. It was an invitation from a very, very good friend of ours, an amazing person, a wonderful musician called Philip Griffin, and he invited us to go to Australia. For me, Australia was like going to Mars, really, it was no different, no different. It's the other side of the world. To go to Australia, to play with some other musicians, Linsey Pollak and Tunji Beier, so we would play as a quartet.

And we landed in Brisbane, I think. So we landed, and Philip came to take us by car to take us to a place called Kin Kin, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, we had no idea where this was, and he took us by a van from the airport. And I remember it was night, so we couldn't see outside. I still had not seen Australia. We landed and it was dark. And we went into this van, and I remember Philip was driving. At some point, he stopped the car and he had the lights on, and on the street there was a snake, a big snake. And I see Philip coming out of the car, taking the snake with his two hands and taking it to the side of the road not to run over it, and it bit him, it bit him on the ... I was like, oh my God, where did they bring us? What is this? What is this place? Anyway, that was my welcome first moments of Australia.

Phillip is a man that loves nature, he loves birds and frogs and snakes. He's an Australian that is real. He's there, he's in the nature, he loves his nature, and he's one with it. He's an unbelievable person, an unbelievable lover of nature and of life, and an amazing musician. He's a very special combination of western and eastern music. Apparently, he had listened to Ross's music and he had fallen in love with it, as many of us have, and he had started to practice the laouto and the oud. And I don't know where they met, if they had met before, if-

Leah Roseman:

Yeah, if I could just say, because my episode with Phillip will be coming out, so he speaks about this. I believe it was in Berlin that he met Ross for the first time.

Kelly Thoma:

Ah, yes, right.

Leah Roseman:

And he spoke about inviting you both to come to Australia.

Kelly Thoma:

Yes, because Tunji Beier was in Berlin, right? Tunji the percussionist was in Berlin?

Leah Roseman:

Yeah. And actually, Linsey Pollak, for people that missed my episode with him, he's the one who said that I've got to interview Kelly Thoma, so that's the connection there.

Kelly Thoma:

Yes. So Philip apparently knew a lot of the repertoire of Ross, and yes, as you said, they met in Berlin. And that's how we got this invitation, thank God, because these trips in Australia are it's like a hallmark in my musical life for many reasons. And yes, we arrived in Kin Kin, and there was Linsey Pollak, another phenomenon, an unbelievable musician as well. He plays wind instruments. I'm sure if you have made an excerpt with him, you will know a lot about his work and what he does. And Tunji Beier, a wonderful percussionist.

And as I keep on saying, all of them, unbelievable people. I mean, what I remember from all these trips to Australia, of course, is the music, all this collaboration with these people, wonderful concerts, wonderful audience, so many things I learned, so many things I had to memorize, and all this eager to perform and all this. But all these experiences with these specific people, I mean, these people are the core of these experiences. If it was not Tunji and Philip and Linsey, all would have been different.

Anyway, so I remember this first year of making our first tour in Australia, okay, I was in a dream, really. All this was in a dream. When we went to Linsey's house in Kin Kin, we basically went into a forest. He lived in a forest in a beautiful wooden house with snakes and spiders and frogs and unbelievable. And we were rehearsing there all day, learning new music, trying to memorize, to create an ensemble because we were not an ensemble. We had to become a team you know, to orchestrate, to arrange the pieces, to improvise, to interact with each other. And we really, in this house, this wonderful environment, being so far from home, really something very magical happened and we toured. I don't remember exactly where we went the first year because we repeat this tour a few times actually. But what I remember very clearly, because I had already started performing with Ross in Greece and in other parts of, also in Europe, what I remember very clearly about performing in Australia was this feeling of performing for audiences that are listening to this music for the first time. And this is very special, because when we perform in Greece, when we perform in Europe or in places where they know Ross's music or my music, it's a totally different experience. You already have a common element. The audience is familiar to what they're listening to, even just a little bit. So you are starting from somewhere.

When you are performing for audiences that are listening to this for the first time or seeing this instruments for the first time, and they have no connotations, no ready conclusions, yes, preconceptions it's quite interesting to try to offer this to such a virgin in a way, audience. I think it is a very, very interesting experience. Both for the audience and for the musician.

One concert we did in the inside the forest where the house was. How do you call this very big thing? Reeds? Yes, yes. Linsey had thousands, thousands of reeds in his field. This very big property. And there was one part of the property where there was a circle that was empty. There were no reeds, but there were reeds around it. And it made like a tent. How can we call this? In the middle you could see the sky. So we played there a concert in a little kiosk. They had made the little kiosk and we performed in that kiosk for friends that came with their blankets, with their pillows.

For me, all this was so new to play my little lyra there with what I knew so far and with these musicians, for people that I didn't know them. They didn't know me. They didn't know the music. It must have been as magical for them as it was for me. I will never forget. I'll never forget this experiences in Australia. I think it was the most, remote place I had played so far. And it was a really special.

Leah Roseman:

And I was curious also about the ... is it pronounced WOMADelaide Festival?

Kelly Thoma:

WOMADelaide, I think it's called. WOMAD is a big company, that they do big festivals all around the world, and they do it I think they done it in London, in other parts of Europe, in America. And that year in 2010, I think it was, they did it in Adelaide and New Zealand, the year we visited. And yes, Ross was invited to play in this. And it was Ross, myself and Giorgos Xylouris, from Greece, from Crete, laouto player and singer. And we played with a man from Australia, Paddy Montgomery, and a wonderful musician. He was very young back then. Very, very good musician. And we played both in Adelaide, in WOMADelaide and New Zealand. We did the same festival in New Zealand that year. Also, very remote place for us to travel from Crete to New Zealand. It's the other side of the world.

Leah Roseman:

So when the pandemic hit and you couldn't travel and you couldn't see people, when we spoke before, you had told me that the online teaching kind of became some of your social life, which I found as well.

Kelly Thoma:

Yes, the pandemic. Now I'm not embarrassed to say, but in the beginning I was avoiding to say that the pandemic, the first months were paradise for us. I know that a lot of people suffered. I know that it was a big disaster. A lot of people were having a very hard time, people locked in their apartments and not knowing what to do and all this panic. But for me as a musician, I said "oh my God" I'm going to be at home. I'm not going to travel. I have my instrument. I'm going to practice. I'm going to just play for myself, with no specific goal. Practice because I love it. Learn new things. It was a paradise for me, especially the first year, all the first lockdown, both me and Ross. We enjoyed it very, very much.

We are so privileged, of course, because we live in a house. We don't live in an apartment. We live on Crete. I mean, being locked down on Crete is not the worst thing that can happen to you. And yeah, we felt very, very privileged. We had a wonderful time. We learned a lot. I studied a lot online, various things, I did some online workshops and of course we were all shocked by what was happening. But in many ways, in many levels it was so liberating. As an artist, I felt that, and as a human as well. I mean, I was going out, everything was so quiet. You could feel that the nature was different. I was imagining that no airplanes were flying over. I was imagining the life of birds. I was imagining how different this must have been for nature in general. And it was a metaphysical experience. How can I say? I don't know. It was very, very interesting. Of course, slowly, slowly, the second lockdown, I started to feel locked down.

But this first year, as I said, I learned a lot and I studied a lot how to become a teacher. Because teaching online, I find it in some ways much more challenging than teaching in person. So I managed to find new ways to try to project the information, trying to be more analytical. I realized that some things we should not take for granted as teachers or as students as well. And that you have to explain and break things into pieces and try to project it to, I don't know, wherever this other person in front of you is in a room, in New York from. You are here in Agios and you're trying to teach Cretan syrtos to somebody in New Mexico and you really want this, you know, have this eager to do it. You don't know how. You have to find different ways. And technology actually gave me a lot of tools, which I didn't use before.

For example, when I teach in person, if I want to keep the rhythm, I just stomp my foot to help the student be on time. But when you are teaching online, you cannot do that because there is this delay. So I used metronomes. I recorded by myself. I recorded drums on various rhythms, which I played along from here, while we were playing together with the microphones muted. Anyway, to cut the story short, I'm saying that we found so many different ways to use technology for the benefit of teaching. It's something that I still use now, even in person classes.

And of course, because I taught so much, I had so many students, everybody that was sending a message about having little classes with me, I said yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Because it was my social life and it was my only income, also.

But it was so enjoyable to meet basically friends and just play my lyra, what I would do anyway on my own. And learning how to become a constructive a teacher. How to become a teacher that sees some results. And it was very, very interesting for me. Very interesting, very interesting. And I think I have developed this muscle of teaching and I feel more confident now. Even in-person classes I feel more confident. I have seen what works better, what doesn't work, or now I see the different types of students. Because as I told you, there are so many different types of students. I see their level. I recognize their levels easier, and I see what they need. It was a fantastic experience for me. All this teaching online.

Leah Roseman:

I just wanted to circle back Kelly, to Rallou Manou dance, because I was looking her up. And for people who are not from Greece or not in the dance world, it's quite interesting. If you wanted to speak to her school briefly, and what she did for Greek culture, I found it interesting.

Kelly Thoma:

Rallou Manou was a very interesting and very important figure in dance culture in Greece. But unfortunately, the year that I joined this school, she was already dead, of course. And her, how do I say, light had faded out. The school where I went, unfortunately, I have to say in the, I think some of my classmates will agree, it was a very old-fashioned school. They were trying to keep the glamour, how can I say? They were trying to keep the light of Rallou Manou, but she was not there. They had distorted a little bit her work. And unfortunately this school, although I got a lot from very good teachers from there, we had some very good teachers. But the school, as a school, I'm going to say something now that I don't know how it sounds in English, but it's made like naphthalene. You know naphthalene? Is this material that we put in wardrobes to keep the insects away.

Leah Roseman:

Oh, mouth balls. The chemical...

Kelly Thoma:

Yes, it smell like this. It smells like an old wardrobe, unfortunately. This woman was very powerful. She did some wonderful collaborations with, for example, Mons Kazantsakis, a composer that at the time was a very creative, but it was just an era, a time that had finished and there were not enough people or enough inspiring people to take this forward.

So unfortunately when I joined, and this is the reason why I think I gave up dancing, because there were not enough inspiring experiences and enough inspiring artists in this school or around me about dance to motivate me to go forward. This is what happened with me. And on the contrary in music at the same time, there was so much inspiration, so much freshness, so much creativity happening not only from Ross, but through Ross's cycle, through all these musicians that I met in Labyrinth and through all this new world that had opened for me with music that I saw this unbalanced, this difference between what was happening with me about dance. It was all becoming heavier and heavier and no motivation. And the other thing was so elevating. And so I saw that there was future there for me. Whereas, in dance, if I didn't just finish that school and leave and go abroad somewhere in Europe. If I didn't go in search of something new and fresh here, I would just be drowned in that mothballs wardrobe, forever.

Yes, I'm really sad to talk this way about my school, but this is the truth. This is the truth. And I see it very clearly because I saw the contrast. I had some very good teachers there, very inspiring. They taught me discipline, they taught me a lot of things. I still love dance a lot. And I remember them. I really appreciate them. I appreciate all this work they did. But it was not enough for me.

Our school was, one example of why I felt like that is because I studied three years in this professional dance school. I studied many, many years before, from six until eighteen. I studied with another teacher. Much more inspiring actually, to be honest. Anna Peppa is her name. She was much more inspiring from six to eighteen, with her. And we did a lot of performances. Every summer, we did two, three performances all together. The students in very beautiful theaters. We had costumes and in the performances, we saw what all this was about. Why we were on the bar all day, and why we were sweating. Why? The reason why, was to perform this art.

So after my eighteenth year, when I entered the Alumni Dance School, I studied three years. And this was a professional school, three years. And we did not even one performance, not even one performance. And this was so disappointing for me. Their excuse was that we did not get enough sponsorship from the government, or I don't know. There were all excuses and all this depressing atmosphere, which made me, this is not inspiring for a young artist or somebody who is studying something. They have to see this light. They have to be in the tunnel and see something, going towards something. I didn't see anything there. I just saw, okay, discipline, six hours a day in that school studying a classical ballet and contemporary dance. All these beautiful. Studying, also Anatomy and the History of Dance and History of Arts and many other things, rhythm, music. But no, we didn't see the point as students in that school. Yes,

Leah Roseman:

I find that very interesting as a music teacher because I did not have enough opportunity to perform growing up, for sure. Even in university, even doing Performance degree, the very few opportunities you had to create them. So I very much as a teacher, create a lot of opportunities for my students to play concerts and play with other musicians. And I think it's so important, but I think that's there isn't enough opportunity. People don't realize how important it is to share your music and have that feeling with an audience. They feel like they're never ready or it's never perfect enough, you know?

Kelly Thoma:

It is so important. I mean, find this with music, for example, on the other side of my dance experience. I started performing much before I was ready. But this made me a musician. When are you ready? If you wait to be ready, what does it mean? Ready? Okay, maybe in Classical, Western music, things are more structured. Things are more specific. I mean, to go out in an audience and play this specific composition of Bach, for example, you have to have a specific level. Because if you're performing in this venue, this venue is for this level of musicians or this audience are expect. But in our music, things are not so strict. And if you have a teacher like Ross, such inspiring and clever and generous teacher, you have the opportunity to perform next to him because it's not only me, so many students across, we performed with him in professional concerts long before we were ready.

I mean, now we see the videos or we listen to the recording saying, I said to Ross, "Ross, why did you take her to this concert?" And he said, "no, it was very good. Not only for you. It was very good for me, it was very good for the audience." He could see beyond the perfect play.

These experiences, these experiences made me a musician and many, many other students. It's so, so important to study with a goal, to practice and have a goal, have a motivation. It's also important to start to practice without a goal. As I say in Corona, during COVID, I liked practicing without having a specific goal. Like I'm not practicing for a specific concert. And I like that just keeping up or just practicing because I love it. But as a student, you really need to perform because this is an art. It's an art. You have to share it. If you don't share it, if you don't try to project it maybe to your friends. It doesn't have to be a theater full of people just for your dogs, for somebody it has to listen to your music is something, generally art is something you address to not necessarily to a human. I don't know, maybe to something sacred, but you really have to find a way. You have to find an address it, you have to project it to someone.

Maybe sometimes I think about it, maybe there is a level of musicality or there is a level of musicians that are much, much higher than me that don't need that. Maybe it's a different level. But for me, it's important to be able to address it. I want to share it. But maybe there is another level that maybe they address it to what they call God, just that. And it's enough for them, I don't know. But for me it's quite important. I really need it, and I love performing. I find joy out of it. And I play differently when somebody's listening.

Leah Roseman:

I put so much into the series because I feel so strongly that music is our best language, as humans. And there's such an incredible depth and variety to music all over the world, in so many ways you can be a musician. So yes, it's such a joy to speak to you about this. So if people want to go to Crete in the summer and do your course through the Musical Labyrinth, I noticed you do a group, so you have a morning and an evening session doing tunes with you, and is there a little performance at the end of that week together, or how does that work?

Kelly Thoma:

So in the Labyrinth, what we do since At Labyrinth from Crete, started in 2002. So it's already twenty-one years that it's functioning here on Crete. These seminars, as you say, they are week seminars, mostly in the summer, but we also do some winter series as well. And as you say, it's three hours in the morning, three hours in the evening. Very often it goes more than that. So we just have time in the middle to have lunch. But officially it's three hours in the morning and three hours in the evening of various different subjects. We have many, many different musicians coming from all over the world, of various genres, various model traditions, mostly model traditions. And the seminar I teach this year, I teach lyra techniques sometimes I teach Cretan music sometimes, but this one that I will do this year is about ensemble playing, just Repertoire, which will play on the lyra with sympathetic strings.

So the students that come to these seminars, these workshops or mine, can come with various different instruments. But I note down that I can help more students that play bowed instruments. So other instruments can come as well. In the past I've done with percussions and a lot of plucked instruments and we create an ensemble. But the ones that are playing bowed instruments will probably benefit more because I can explain more things about bowing, about phrasing, how I express some phrases in melodies and all this.

Yes, in the end, most of the times we have little concerts that we play amongst friends or amongst the other students for the other students that are in other seminars. But this year, also last year with the same, apart from Houdetsi, which is the village where the Cretan Labyrinth is all these years. We will also have seminars in another village on Crete called Anogia.

Because unfortunately in our village we had a massive earthquake in 2021. And a lot of the accommodation and a lot of facilities were destroyed. So we don't have enough accommodation facilities to have all the seminars we want in the same village. So that's why my workshop this year will be in Anogia, where we actually, we collaborate with the municipality there who has been very helpful. And for venues for the workshops, they have given us some very special rooms, which are called mitata. Mitata are like stone igloos, which are the houses of shepherds. So they're like igloos, but with stones with one hole on the top on the ceiling. And they're very cool. They have the perfect temperature. They're a bit dark, but very, very charming. And this is where we do them.

In terms of performing in Labyrinth, of course, we have this other wonderful idea of Ross, who is the artistic director there, of creating an orchestra. We have an orchestra called Mitos Orchestra, which is a number of students, some of our best students of Labyrinth. Every year the people change, but the number is almost always the same, around ten, twelve musicians. And they are all students of Labyrinth very good, who are now very good musicians, and they stay in the village of Houdetsi. They stay for two months and they perform every week, two or three concerts, with the teachers that are coming to teach every given week the seminars of our program.

So it is very, very interesting for them because they explore different genres, different kind of musicians, different kind of creators, different kind of composers, I mean different styles. They have to rediscover their instruments and they have to perform that. They have to project this to an audience in very good venues with very knowledgeable audience. Because the audience here, we have trained them with all this music all these years. Sometimes they're quite demanding. Very, very interesting.

Leah Roseman:

Okay, fascinating. Well, I hope some listeners will check out, everything will be linked of course, in the description.

Kelly Thoma:

Yeah.

Leah Roseman:

So I wanted to thank you so much for your sharing your stories and your music today. It was absolutely wonderful.

Kelly Thoma:

Thank you very much. I was very enjoyable. Thank you.

Leah Roseman:

I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Thanks for following the series on your favorite Podcast Player and sharing your favorite episodes with your friends, all of which help find new listeners. I have lots more episodes coming in this Season Three, with a fascinating diversity of musicians and their stories and music. Have a great week.