Katalin La Favre was drawn to music at a young age.
Katalin La Favre was drawn to music at a young age.
“It was during (ballet) lessons that I was really exposed to music for the first time,” La Favre said. “I distinctly remember the moment when I realized that the choreography was connected to the music and it really felt like an immersion into a different world. I have always been so taken with music’s magical ability to color the way we experience the world, sculpt the space around us, remind us of emotions we felt even decades ago. So, my first experience with music was really through movement and I fell in love with it initially through dance.”
This passion led La Favre, of Chester Township, to study at some of the most prestigious schools in the country and around the world.
And now, the accomplished musician is sharing her talents in a performance of Bach’s “Music Box, Goldberg Variations” reimagined at 7:30 p.m. March 3 at St. Noel Church, 35200 Chardon Road in Willoughby Hills. The performance is a freewill donation with no reservations required.
Percussionists La Favre and Brian Calhoon will explore excerpts from Bach’s iconic keyboard work, infusing the timeless music with intriguing timbres of metallic percussion instruments while exploring sounds of tongue drums, tuned glass bottles, handbells and more.
Upon graduating from West Geauga High School in 2006, La Favre moved to San Francisco and has been living in different locations for the past 15 years.
She studied at the San Francisco Conservatory, Colburn School in Los Angeles and received a Fulbright grant funding the first year and a half of her studies in Lyon, France.
“I was planning on spending two years in France, but soon enough, two years turned into nine years as I really loved living there,” she said. “I had been thinking about moving back to the United States for a couple years, but the decision really became clear to me during the pandemic, when I was really missing my family and wanted to be closer to them. It also felt like it was just time to come back and reconnect with my roots.”
La Favre loved growing up in Geauga County.
“The area is truly so special,” she said. “After living in the city for so many years, it is so wonderful to be back in this beautiful area surrounded by nature.”
La Favre also reconnected with Calhoon, who lives at the very tip of Cape Cod, Mass., and is a dear friend and fellow classmate at SFC.
“Like Katalin, I studied classical percussion and have two conservatory degrees in music, so I play many instruments, but gravitate to mallet instruments like the marimba and vibraphone, especially,” he said. “I also sing and have a show I put on called the ‘Marimba Cabaret’ where I sing show tunes and pop songs while accompanying myself on marimba. It’s basically a one-man cover band.”
Calhoon has also performed many new works by young composers in Boston.
“In chamber music class (when he and La Favre were students), we were assigned to learn and perform a marimba duet forming a musical and personal relationship that has lasted to this day,” he said.
Bach’s “Music Box” is their first time making music together since then.
“We are able to read each other and communicate without speaking in a way that is rare and valuable when two musicians make music together,” Calhoon said. “In short, it’s a joy to make music with Katalin.”
They said the process, born during the pandemic, opened their imaginations.
“My old teacher, Jean Geoffroy, had a saying: ‘From constraint, creativity is born,’” La Favre said. “This was certainly an experience that proved this idea.”
For their performance, the duo arranged excerpts from Goldberg for metallic percussion, using unique instruments such as the vibraphone, glockenspiel, tongue drums, hammered dulcimer and handbells.
“All of these instruments really sound like a music box and we had fun imagining, ‘If Bach had a music box, what would it sound like?” she said.
The duo hopes to honor Bach’s timeless music by infusing it with a modern percussion aesthetic.
“So, whether you have seen baroque music performed on traditional period instruments, or you enjoy hearing new-found objects or unusual instruments paired together, this performance is part traditional concert and part sound meditation,” Calhoon added. “We hope to create a new kind of listening experience for audiences to meet them where they are, allowing a way ‘in’ that sometimes classical concerts don’t.”
The duo hopes there is a greater future for their project — be it recording, touring or giving masterclasses on the subject of arrangement.
“Working with Katalin is inspiring and brings out a creativity I don’t always get to apply,” Calhoon said. “We work collaboratively and welcome each other’s ideas, even exploring mistakes together and finding a unique path to a goal we ourselves don’t yet know. The process has been full of imagination and experimentation, and we’re excited to reveal the final product.”
