Bio

Flautist Katie Macdonald, violinist Beatriz Rola and cellist Anna Litvinenko compose, improvise and collaborate with artists from other fields, using their classical backgrounds combined with influences from folk, experimental and contemporary music. Kalea’s distinctive sound is intimate, subtle, daring, explorative and hopes to invite and challenge those they share music with.

Kalea originated in 2018 with three friends improvising at home together and building a strong musical relationship. Each coming from a classical background but having expanded their practices to other genres. Improvising has always been a foundation in their process and leads them to create entirely new works. Often using impetus from poetry, composers, visual art, film and dance they aim to blur the boundaries between classical and more experimental sound worlds. Other stimuli have included working with graphic scores and exploring the sensory experience of music. All their projects to date have been entirely collaborative which is the way they enjoy working the most. Previous projects have involved working extensively with both new and existing poetry, in particular published poet Andrew Mitchell and visual artist Mary Kuper, with whom they have performed at the British Library and Keat’s House both in London and Rome. Andrew writes “ narrative sequences of poems” often on the life and works of renowned poets and authors such as John Keats, Lord Byron and Mary Shelley. Their newest project “Playing with Words” is influenced by this collaboration in addition to Julian Rosefeldt’s Manifesto. This work presents itself as a contemporary musical response to poetry throughout history, it includes live improvised visual art by Phoebe Pryor an emerging British artist. They will perform this four times at Splendor in Amsterdam, each performance with differing musical material due to its improvisatory nature.