In March 2007, the Abby Whiteside Foundation presented Gregg Kallor's New York concert debut in Carnegie Hall's Weill
Recital Hall. The performance featured the world premiere of Kallor's acclaimed song-cycles Exhilaration and
Yeats Songs, sung by mezzo-soprano Adriana Zabala, and a rich program of solo works that showcased Kallor's
versatility and his fresh approach to the piano recital. Harris Goldsmith wrote: "It took but a few impeccably shaped phrases
to make it plain that Kallor is a formidably well-trained technician and a master of stylish proportion as well... This
superb recital debut truly established a new, important voice in our musical annals."
Kallor's most recent Carnegie Hall concert, in April 2011, featured the world premiere of his nine-movement suite for solo piano, A Single Noon - a musical tableau of New York life told through a combination of composed music and improvisation. Fred Hersch calls A Single Noon "the work of an extraordinary pianist, a composer of great distinction and a true conceptualist... This is 21st-century music that has clearly absorbed the past and looks to a bright and borderless musical future." A Single Noon will be featured on Kallor's upcoming solo album, scheduled for release in 2012.
Kallor is the recipient of a 2011 Aaron Copland Award for composition. During a residency at the historic Copland House this winter, Kallor will compose a concerto for piano and orchestra in which both composition and improvisation shape the musical narrative.
In May, 2011 Kallor conducted the the world premiere of "My Coma Dreams," Fred Hersch's jazz theater production for chamber ensemble, singer/actor, and video animation commissioned by Peak Performances at Montclair State University. Kallor conducts performances this season in Berlin and San Francisco.
Kallor's first album, There's a Rhythm, features his jazz trio with bassist Chris Van Voorst Van Beest and drummer Kendrick Scott. "Kallor can carry a poetic mood right to the edge of sorrow, always sounding lyrical and moving" (The Hartford Courant). His second album, Exhilaration, features his song-settings of poems by Emily Dickinson, William Butler Yeats, Christina Rossetti and Herschel Garfein sung by mezzo-soprano Adriana Zabala. Opera News wrote: "Kallor knows how to make these words sing, and Zabala gives perfect flight to them."
For more information, please visit GreggKallor.com.
Mezzo-soprano Adriana Zabala recently joined the Minnesota Opera in the title role of the American premiere of
Jonathan Dove's The Adventures of Pinocchio. For her role in Waiting for the Barbarians by Philip
Glass, The New York Times hailed her as "a vivid, fearless presence," and the Los Angeles Times called her
"extraordinary - a young, vibrant mezzo."
An avid recitalist, Zabala has appeared at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and the Barns at Wolf Trap. She studied lieder as a Fulbright Scholar at the Mozarteum, and served for five years as the Artistic Director of the Southeastern Festival of Song. Ms. Zabala is an alumna of Louisiana State University and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. She has appeared in over 50 opera productions throughout the U.S. and abroad, and has been guest soloist on concerts with the Virginia Symphony and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, among many others.
