Kelly Thoma: Lyra Player and the Magic of the Labyrinth Musical Workshop

Kelly Thoma is a Greek musician who plays the 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 favourite podcast player or the video on my YouTube. Show notes and transcript linked here as well: https://www.leahroseman.com/episodes/kelly-thoma Please support this series! I really do need my listensers' help and every dollar is appreciated: https://ko-fi.com/leahroseman Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (02:12) Crete, the lyra, Ross Daly (12:13) lyra duo Kelly with Ross “Anamkhara” (18:49) how Kelly discovered the music of Ross Daly and changed her life (33:24) learning and teaching music (43:34)cellist Mayu Shviro (44:43) duo with Mayu Shviro “Kontylies” (51:04) Mayu Shviro (53:29) “Flutter” Kelly Thoma quartet  from the album Anamkhara. Mayu Shviro, Paavlos Spyropoulos, Kirill Osherov (57:28) TOKSO quartet (01:01:18) TOKSO compilation video clip (01:06:24) different bowed instruments I’ve featured on this series (01:07:52) Cretan culture, history, food, language (01:18:28) tours to Australia, Linsey Pollak, Tunji Beier, Philip Griffin  (01:28:52) the pandemic, teaching online (01:33:27) the importance of performing and why Kelly stopped studying dance  (01:40:42) the importance of performing for music students (01:45:41) Labyrinth Musical Workshop opportunites to study in Crete