Music from the East, the West and the Inside Out

Friends of Music at Guilford is hosting The Möbius Trio for a day-long residency at Guilford Central School on Friday, February 12. That evening, the group will perform for the general public at 7:30 pm in The River Garden in downtown Brattleboro. Proceeds from the concert will benefit FOMAG's ongoing Music Enrichment Program at the school, which is partially funded by the Max Y. Seaton Trust.

The Möbius Trio performs a variety of traditional and original repertoire selected from and influenced by the cultures of Greece, Turkey, and the Middle East. Combining decades of study on their individual instruments, the group brings a breath of contemporary arrangement to the classical and folk music forms of these regions. Musicians Beth Bahia Cohen, Mac Ritchey and Todd Roach have performed with each other over the years as members of different ensembles.

Roach, who plays darbuka, riqq, and frame drums in this ensemble, is a Brattleboro-based percussion specialist and educator who studied with a long list of master drummers to hone his performance skills. As founder of The Loft performance space in Brattleboro, he has produced a wide variety of world music events over the past decade, is listed as an artist and educator with the Vermont Arts Council, and for the past two years has been on the faculty at the Tamburi Mundi international frame drum festival in Germany. He is an artist endorser for Vermont-based Cooperman Drum Company and in 2000 released an instructional video for Carl Fisher Publishing entitled "The Quick Guide to Playing Doumbec."

Beth Bahia Cohen plays violin, Greek lyras, the Turkish bowed tanbur, and the Egyptian rababa with The Möbius Trio. Trained as a classical violinist and violist in New York, she earned her Master's from Manhattan School of Music and spent a decade performing with symphony, ballet, opera, and chamber orchestras in New York and Europe, as well as in Broadway shows and commercial recording studios. She left the city scene to travel, study, and perform with masters of the violin and other bowed instruments from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Norway. Beth performs her solo show "The Art of the Bow" throughout the U.S. and Europe, and is member of the World Music faculty at Tufts University. She lives in the Boston area.

Multi-instrumentalist Mac Ritchey performs on oud, Turkish saz, and guitar in this trio but is also skilled on keyboard, bass, drums, percussion, and didjeridoo. A student of electronic music at Oberlin, then anthropology at Brandeis, he has focused for the past ten years primarily on mastering the oud, otherwise known as the Arabic lute. Mac has studied Turkish and Armenian music traditions extensively, has toured the U.S. with various ensembles, and appeared at Tamburi Mundi in 2009. His ensemble 35th Parallel performs and conducts school workshops throughout the Northeast as a Juried Artist with both the Vermont Arts Council and the New England Foundation for the Arts. Mac lives in Carlisle, Massachusetts.

To set the tone for an evening of music from the region, a light supper of Middle Eastern foods prepared by Sarkis Market will be on sale at the River Garden beginning at 6:30. Tea, coffee, cold drinks, and water will be available. Desserts and beverages will be sold during the concert. Concert admission is $10 general, $5 students 16 and under.

Roach will be bringing Ensemble Datura to town in early April for another residency as part of Friends of Music's enrichment program at Guilford School. This dynamic World Music ensemble performs traditional music from Turkey, South India, and the Arab world as well as original compositions featuring instruments and ideas that draw from traditional music cultures of South India, Arabic countries, Turkey, Australia, Tuva, Zimbabwe (Shona), Brazil, and the USA. Again a benefit public performance will be offered at The River Garden.

For further information on these events, contact Friends of Music at Guilford at (802) 254-3600, email office@fomag.org, or visit online at www.fomag.org.