Ross Daly has traveled the world, mainly in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, studying various forms of local music traditions. In 1982 he established an educational institution called Labyrinth Musical Workshop, which since 2002 is situated in the village of Houdetsi, on the island of Crete. Seminars and "master-classes" are conducted every year at Labyrinth with some of the greatest teachers of traditional music from around the world. It is a meeting point for musicians and students and is recognized as the leading institution in Greece today, in the field of education of modal and traditional music in general.
Daly has released more than 35 albums of his own compositions and of his own arrangements of traditional melodies collected during his travels.
Ross Daly is the originator of the term Contemporary Modal Music, which refers to contemporary compositional works which draw their influences and inspiration from the broader world of Modal musical traditions which are found primarily (although not exclusively) in the vast geographical region between Western Africa and Western China.
Kelly Thoma was born in Piraeus in 1978. Since 1995, she has been studying the lyra with Ross Daly and three years later started travelling with him and his group, “Labyrinth”, participating in concerts in Europe, Asia, Australia and the U.S. She has taken part in many projects with musicians from various different traditions from other countries.
Being a member of "Labyrinth" and Labyrinth Musical Workshop she has had the chance to meet and play with many important musicians such as the Trio Chemirani, Omer Erdogdular, Derya Turkan, Zohar Fresco, Pedram Khavar Zamini, Dhruba Ghosh, Ballake Sissoko, Erdal Erzincan, Mehmet Erenler,Yurdal Tokcan, Ustad Mohammed Rahim Khushnawaz and many more. She participates in many of Ross Daly's projects : Ross Daly Quartet, Seyir, Iris, White Dragon (...) as well as in ToksoFolk String Quartet, (with Anne Hytta, Eleonore Billy and Sigrun Eng) and has performed in Carnegie Hall, Theatre de la Ville, Queen Elizabeth Hall, San Francisco WMF, Rainforest WMF, Womadelaide, Rudolstadt and many important venues and festivals around the world.
She has graduated from the English Literature department of the Athens University as well as from the ”Rallou Manou” Dance School.
She has released three albums of her own compositions Anamkhara (2009), 7Fish(2014) and "As Τhe Winds Die Down" (2018).
The term "contemporary modal music" has been created by Ross Daly and describes the sum total of contemporary compositions created today by musicians working within various modal traditions. This music is the continuation of the procedure of modal composing through a very free perspective and is not at all connected with the goal of "preserving traditions". It is the contemporary expression of the beauty of modality (phrase-orientated non-harmonic music which often employs non-tempered intervals).
