Lyric (2026)

"Crete’s Stelios Petrakis is at the peak of players of his island’s best-known traditional instrument, the Cretan lyra, a small pear-shaped fiddle held vertically on the knee. Its three bowed strings are stopped by the fingernails of the non-bowing hand rather than being pressed to the fingerboard. Its sound hovers on the enticing edge between fundamental and harmonics. Petrakis is also a leading luthier, making the lyras and the other instruments he plays, including the traditional metal-strung lute laouto, and in conjunction with Ross Daly he’s developed and plays a range of lyras with ringing sympathetic strings. True to its title, this an album of his lyra, and laouto, with a panoply of other traditional instruments played by musicians of equal stature to Petrakis, in music of rich lyricism, in melody and texture." (RootsWorld)