By Joan Reinthaler
The Washington Post
Tuesday, October 21, 2003, p. C04

When the Jews fled Spain and scattered to Morocco and Eastern Europe in the 15th century, they took their music with them. Flory Jagoda is one of the preservers of the Sephardic tradition, songs that combine the colors of the Spanish folk tradition with the soul and ecstatic quality of Jewish music. She and a group of all-star "friends" brought a nostalgic and haunting program of traditional and recently composed music to the University of Maryland's Clarice Smith Center on Sunday. The friends were Tina Chancey and Scott Reiss, founding members of the early-music group Hesperus; lutenist-guitarist Howard Bass; tenor-guitarist Ramon Tasat; and Jagoda's daughter, Lori Jagoda-Lowell, Susan Feltman Gaeta and Betsy Cary, who sang and played guitar and percussion.

Jagoda, who composed six of the pieces on the program, wove stories of her childhood in Bosnia and of the celebrations that occasioned some of the music. She sang, played guitar and accordion and, in general, oversaw everything that went on.

The performances were lovely, very much in the spirit of gentle and sympathetic collaboration that characterizes the best in folk tradition. Chancey, playing viol and recorder, and Reiss, on the recorder, ornamented lyrically. Bass backed up everything with his usual delicate touch. Tasat's duets with Jagoda were most intimate, as he tempered his voice to balance exquisitely with hers, and the three young women contributed easygoing folk harmonization.

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