Aloha everyone, I'm trying to take a little break from Orchestrotica stuff since wrapping up our tour a couple weeks ago and our super fun CW Trio concert in Portland, ME on the 7th. We're already in tour planning mode for 2026 too! Want to see some pics from tour, and behind the scenes? View the tour photo album. Today's dispatch is a guest post by long-time quintet member on cümbüş, oud, and resonator guitar Tev Stevig. Tev is also Czarna Wolgastar's arranger/composer/guitarist…and he's director of the brand new Labyrinth New England project with some news to share on their debut March festival!
Enjoy! --Mr. Ho

Hello dear Orchestroticans!

It’s my first time writing to you all here, so I just want to say how much I enjoyed sharing music, stories, food, and tiki drinks with you all in AZ, NV, and CA last week and with the folks in Portland, ME this past Friday (w/ Czarna Wolgastar). What a blast! And now as I am reintegrating into civilian life, I am digging in to my next big event here in the Boston area and I’d like to tell you about it.

With the Quintet, as Brian always says, we are creating a crazy soup of global influences, chamber music, jazz, and exotica. The result is a series of musical fantasies with influences in the real world, but the mashups are out there enough that they transport you to a place that is really beyond our normal human experience. My current labor of love is a bit more grounded in the real world, but is still just as varied a mix of cultures and music traditions.

Many of you who have seen the Orchestrotica perform know that for over 20 years, I have been exploring music from the Balkans, Greece, Turkey, and other parts of the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, which has led me to start Labyrinth New England, a new organization dedicated to presenting traditional and contemporary modal music (what's modal music?) of the Mediterranean, Middle East, North Africa, Central, and South Asia as a holistic art form that transcends national borders.

Labyrinth New England seeks to bring new listeners and performers to this music, by providing greater access, education, and by making the Greater Boston area a thriving hub for these modal music traditions through an active base of local performers.

The Debut Labyrinth NE Festival (March 1-2)

Concert & Workshops - Belmont, MA (near Boston)

On March 1-2, 2025 we will hold our first major event, the Labyrinth New England Festival featuring concerts and workshops in the world of contemporary modal music - music that is from or influenced by traditions as far west as Morocco, as far east as western China, and everywhere in between. This includes a lot of unique music traditions, but the idea is that in essence they are all speaking dialects of the same language of modality in music. Other than the lineup of incredibly talented local musicians, the best part is that through a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, we have been able to make admission to the festival mostly free, with a suggested donation.

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Want to attend or support the festival?
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I hope you’ll join us for a concert, one of the workshops, or perhaps more. If you can’t join us, but like what we are doing and want to support us, you can still click through to the registration page to donate towards our future events.

Thanks so much for reading, and if you have questions or want to send me a comment, just hit reply, and change the TO: line to labyrinthnewengland@gmail.com . Those messages go right to me.

Mahalo,
​
Tev Stevig
Artistic Director
Labyrinth New England​
Member, Mr. Ho's Orchestrotica

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