With the Music a la Carte Series, the New Haven-based Kallos Chamber Music Series has figured out how to deliver short, online bursts of chamber-music joy — enough to enliven the coldest Monday night and still leave time to make dinner.
The next Kallos concert is Monday, Nov. 23; the previous Monday, a trio of Beomjae Kim on flute, Khari Joyner on cello, and Min Young Kang took on a trio by Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu. A bright first movement gave the trio a workout they were well prepared for, but it was the second and third movements that really let the trio show what they could do. On piano, Kang seemed almost to breathe through her hands as she let the first chords of the second movement out. Kim on flute joined with a hovering melody while Joyner’s lush pizzicato created space. Together the trio were particularly adept with the moving parts of this movement, as flute, piano, and cello merged their disparate voices into a full, complete texture. Their phrasing got especially nice in a passage that found the piano sounding like a bell, while flute and cello offered delicate response.
The third movement started off with a mysterious, meandering melody from the flute, then burst into action. The trio’s acute articulation kept the music crisp and clear, which was particularly important for the kinds of harmonies that Martinu favors; they’d be muddy without it. In some passages the trio managed to make it sound as if they were unfurling the music, making it curl through the air. Joyner’s playing on cello was especially strong when that instrument took the melody, but then cello and flute could also blend together while the piano kept the pulse. The trio leaned together into the swaying rhythms of the movement’s middle section, letting them gallop back into the movement’s faster sections, the cello nearly taking the role of drummer. All in all, in a fleet
The Kallos concerts are notable in part for their drawing attention to lesser-known composers. This month’s first concert featured Joseph Haydn, but in subsequent concerts the group performed works of Gabriel Pierné and Philippe Gaubert, in addition to the Martinu trio featured last Monday.
For Min Young Kang, the group’s artistic director as well as pianist, the foray into the less-traveled parts of the classical repertoire was partially a result of the makeup of the trio on hand. The combination of flute, cello, and piano is not very common to begin with, and features a set of timbres that don’t necessarily blend easily. “To program a whole concert with this combination was a little bit challenging, but I managed.” Of the works, the Martinu is one of the more popular for the trio. “It’s standard for this combination,” Kang said, though she’s aware that doesn’t make it standard for many listeners.
“I always like to program hidden gems,” she continued. This was also in response to feedback from audiences, who expressed an interest in hearing them rather than “what you hear all the time.”
Kallos lived in New Haven from 2017 to 2019 while she worked at the Yale School of Music. She founded Kallos in 2018; the group held its first concert in 2019. “Quite a lot of musicians on my roster are based in New Haven,” she said, though she always drew her musicians from farther afield in New York and New Jersey as well. In 2019, she moved to New Jersey to be with her husband, who she married while she was at Yale. The pandemic has scattered the musicians on the Kallos roster a bit farther; the concerts for Music a la Carte were filmed in NV Factory, a recording studio in New Jersey, as well.
“It’s one of my favorite recording studios. They just bought a brand new Steinway, and for me it’s a dream to play.” And, of course, the recording studio can keep the audio quality high, which “is really important for me,” Kang said. “I want my audience to feel as if they’re listening in the same room.”
Joyner, Kim, and Kang are all currently living in the New York-New Jersey area. Practicing under Covid restrictions proved tricky, especially because Kim is a flautist. It meant that he couldn’t wear a mask. To practice the trio, Kim sat outside from the other two musicians, playing through an open window. In time the trio figured out how to practice inside using shower curtains as barriers. “When we finally got to play in the same room” to film the concert, Kang said, “it felt like heaven.”
The concerts were all filmed during a two-hour recording session at the studio. “We recorded without any break or editing,” Kang said. But to present them to an audience, she decided that in this era of hours and hours of screen time — for adults and students — a series of short videos was better.
“There are so many distractions” when watching videos online, Kang said. “Why not break it up into three or four little concerts?” The audience, she said, “loves the short format — it’s just like watching a YouTube video.”
Kallos had planned on releasing more concerts in January, but Kang is also adamant that they can rehearse and perform safely. “The number of cases is getting really high, so we wanted to make sure we’re not taking any risks,” she said. “I am figuring out what we should do.”
One thing that isn’t in doubt, though, is the need filled by playing music again. “It’s saving my artistic soul,” Kang said about performing during the pandemic. “I was emotionally really bad in the first two months of the pandemic. I grew really hopeless and I worried about my career. I couldn’t really see the end of this thing.” But then an anonymous donor stepped in to fund Kallos concerts for the year (“it goes to recording fees and fees for our musicians,” Kang said). “After that I was able to think about what I really would like to share with the audience — not just normal programs. I tried to come up with programs that could be meaningful.” January’s series of concerts, for example, will feature all pieces written during the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1917 and 1918.
“Personally I feel I am born again, in the joy of making music again,” she said. She feels the same sense of urgency and flexibility from the musicians around her. “All the musicians are willing to do anything — any kind of gig or concert. We’ve never experienced this before. It’s like getting a lesson every day. Every month is different. We have to adapt, find other ways to get through this.”
Though at the same time, she said, “the performing arts without an audience is very hard.” In a recording studio, “the energy is different. It’s challenging to play for the mics. We really look forward to playing live again for audiences.”
November’s final concert will be this Monday, Nov. 23. Visit Kallos’s website for tickets and details about the group’s plans for the rest of the year.
