FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 28, 2025
Contact: Ellie Falaris Ganelin
ellie@kombosmusic.com
202-594-7571
Press Images | Program Details & Videos
Kombos Collective Launches Vardari: Shared Balkan Melodies
Premiere performance at Berkeley Finnish Hall May 31
BERKELEY, Calif., March 28, 2025 — Kombos Collective is proud to announce its newest arranging and recording project called Vardari, which premieres on May 31 at the Berkeley Finnish Hall (1970 Chestnut St, Berkeley, Calif.) with live music and a folk dance lesson. Vardari is an exploration of shared Balkan melodies, celebrating the interconnected musical traditions of the Balkan region with a focus on the Hellenic world. The pieces will feature original arrangements for a world fusion ensemble, exploring Balkan music through nine different languages and reflecting the region’s diverse cultural history. In support of this project, Vardari has been awarded grants from the Fleishhacker Foundation, InterMusic SF, and the Elios Charitable Foundation.
Kombos Collective will go on to perform at the Berkeley Balkan Bacchanal on August 16 (Starry Plough, 3101 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley) and plans to self-release a full-length album titled Vardari: Shared Balkan Melodies on September 5.
Kombos director Ellie Falaris Ganelin is the catalyst behind this project: researching repertoire, arranging the scores, playing flute and singing in a number of languages. She has collected song ideas from her own research and crowd-sourced repertoire and lyrics through the international network of the East European Folklife Center, a Berkeley-based organization that offers education in folk music and dance traditions of the region. A Greek speaker herself, she has worked with native speakers of other languages to coach her on the pronunciation of lyrics. In any one song, 2-5 languages will be sung, including Albanian, Armenian, BCS (Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian), Bulgarian, Greek, Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), N. Macedonian, Romanian and Turkish.
Background
Ganelin is of mixed Balkan heritage, having carried on the Greek language from her father and Balkan folk dances from her Croatian-American mother. Her paternal great grandparents hailed from the former Ottoman city of Monastiri (modern-day Bitola, N. Macedonia) and spoke five languages. During the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria gained territory and independence from the Ottoman Empire and subsequently fought amongst themselves. Like many families, Ganelin’s ancestors ended up on different sides of the newly formed borders.
The name Vardari comes from the Vardar or Vardaris River, which has inspired Balkan songs in different languages and is a source of both sustenance and inspiration. The river — like the music — transcends borders.
“So much of my music career the last 14 years has been about celebrating my Hellenic heritage through music,” says Ganelin. “I’ve learned over time that the folk and urban folk music traditions of Greece and more broadly, the former Ottoman lands of Southeastern Europe and Anatolia, don’t always neatly fit within national borders. Melodies end up being quite portable: at first, because of commerce and traveling musicians, and later on, because of the emergence of recorded music and of course, the Internet. The songs I’ve curated could be considered historical greatest hits, melodies that are so magnetic that people adapt and translate them in their respective languages. Vardari confirms what people of this region know in their hearts. The backbone of our collective musical traditions use the same underlying modes: an undercurrent that makes these musics more interconnected than different.”
Personnel
Ellie Falaris Ganelin, vocals, flute & arrangements
Christina Walton, violin & backing vocals
J. Maddox, guitar
Joe Belson, bass
Sage Baggott, drumset & percussion
Upcoming Dates
Vardari PREMIERE // Saturday, May 31, 2025
Berkeley Finnish Hall // 1970 Chestnut St, Berkeley, Calif.
6:30pm doors open
7pm folk dance lesson with Janetta Redžić
7:30pm live music
Sliding scale: $25-10
Berkeley Balkan Bacchanal // Saturday, August 16, 2025
Starry Plough, 3101 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, Calif.
8-12pm (set time TBA)
$20 general/$15 students
Album Release // Friday, September 5, 2025
Album officially released on CD, Bandcamp, and streaming platforms
View the latest details on the Vardari page
About Kombos Director
Ellie Falaris Ganelin is a flutist and music director who is classically trained and welcomes other traditions into the fold, including jazz, Latin, Balkan and klezmer music. She is active as a performer of chamber, orchestral and theater music in the San Francisco Bay Area. She recently performed in the pit for the national production of Mary Zimmerman’s Matchbox Magic Flute at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, with a stage appearance in costume. She is committed to making classical music inviting and accessible for all as an ambassador and performer for the Awesöme Orchestra Collective. For the past decade, she has been the director of the Kombos Collective. Ellie received her B.A. in Music from the University of Maryland, where she also holds a B.A. in Journalism and a Minor in French.
About Kombos Collective
The Kombos Collective (formerly Greek Chamber Music Project) presents captivating programming in intimate concert settings inspired by the Hellenic World. The Kombos Collective is a champion of Greek composers, shedding light on the rich musical repertoire coming out of Greece and the Greek diaspora. Recent programs have included Music of Resistance: A Tribute to Mikis Theodorakis (2024), Out of Time, Out of Place (2024-25) exploring the diasporic experience through song, Uproot: Music from Asia Minor (2023), the commissioning of Talos Dreams, inspired by the myth of the first robot (2021-2022), deeply personal songs about The Iliad in Conversations with Homer (2020); and the East Coast tour, Remembering the Jews of Greece (2019). Upcoming projects premiering in 2025 include Vardari and 100 Years of Hadjidakis, celebrating the centennial birthday of legendary composer Manos Hadjidakis in October. Kombos has released several full-length albums and performed at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Library of Congress, as well as cultural centers and universities across the U.S. and Canada.
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