composer • pianist
Gregg Kallor (“KAY-ler”) is a composer and pianist whose music fuses the classical and jazz traditions he loves into a new, deeply personal language. “[Kallor] writes music of unaffected emotional directness. Leavened with flashes of oddball humor, his works succeed in drawing in the listener — not as consumer or worshipful celebrant, but in a spirit of easygoing camaraderie.” (The New York Times) His solo piano, chamber music, and song performances create a narrative through-line between his original compositions, innovative arrangements, and classic repertoire, reaching beyond the constraints of genre. Kallor’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, commissioned by Arizona Opera, premiered in October 2023, followed by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center debut of Kallor’s musical ghost story, The Tell-Tale Heart on Halloween. Opera News calls Kallor “a rising star in the music world” with “a singular compositional voice.”
opera and vocal works
Kallor’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s iconic novel, Frankenstein, is “the very definition of what modern-day opera should aspire to be.” (Arizona Daily Star) Commissioned by Arizona Opera, the sold-out run of world premiere performances in Phoenix and Tucson in October 2023 featured GRAMMY®-winning baritone Edward Parks (the Creature), tenor Terrence Chin-Loy (Victor Frankenstein), and mezzo-soprano Katherine Beck (Elizabeth Lavenza), conducted by Clinton Smith and directed by Sarah Meyers. Broadway World calls Kallor’s Frankenstein “a masterpiece of horror and humanity” and “a significant addition to the operatic repertoire.”
Weaving together music and literature, Kallor’s multimedia presentation about the enduring resonance of Mary Shelley’s heartbreaking novel and the process of adapting it into an opera explores how the plight of a living being that is shunned and vilified for its “otherness” continues to speak to us across generations and borders — and why telling this story about the urgent need for empathy, at this time and in this way, is vital. He has presented this narrative journey through Frankenstein in public libraries, bookstores, community organizations, and as a celebratory pre-performance event at the premiere performances.
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center presented a concert version of Kallor's one-act ghost story chamber opera, The Tell-Tale Heart, on Halloween 2023, performed by mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano, cellist Nicholas Canellakis, and pianist Lucille Chung. Opera News calls the immersive monodrama “a tour-de-force… a true marriage of song, declamation, poetry and psychological thriller.” Kallor unveiled this setting of Edgar Allan Poe’s chilling short story in a 100-year-old vaulted crypt beneath the Church of the Intercession in Harlem in 2016, and recorded the piece with soprano Melody Moore and cellist Joshua Roman — along with Kallor’s settings of poems by Sara Teasdale, Elinor Wylie, Clementine von Radics, Stephen Crane, and William Butler Yeats. The album was released in 2018, coinciding with three sold-out performances in the Catacombs of Historic Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, NY, sung by mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano. The New York Observer wrote, “I can't think of a better opera to become a new Halloween tradition.”
Kallor's previous vocal album, Exhilaration — Dickinson and Yeats Songs, features his settings of poems by Emily Dickinson, William Butler Yeats, and Christina Rossetti sung by mezzo-soprano Adriana Zabala. Opera News wrote: “Kallor knows how to make these words sing, and Zabala gives perfect flight to them.”
SOlo performances
Kallor’s solo piano suite, A Single Noon, is a musical tableau of life in New York City told through a seamless blend of composed music and improvisation. The suite evokes moments of caffeinated bliss, embarrassing subway mishaps, and the buzzing energy of a city driven by dynamic, thoughtful, talented, and slightly crazy people. His recording of the piece was produced by legendary pianist-composer Fred Hersch, who calls A Single Noon “the work of an extraordinary pianist, a composer of great distinction and a true conceptualist... This ambitious and unique suite takes us somewhere that is very deeply heartfelt and dazzlingly executed. This is 21st-century music that has clearly absorbed the past and looks to a bright and borderless musical future.”
Kallor’s solo performances at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall embodied his inclusive and wide-ranging musical appetite, featuring a combination of his original music, classic repertoire, and improvisation. Harris Goldsmith (New York Concert Review) wrote of Kallor’s 2007 debut concert: “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… This superb debut truly established a new, important voice in our musical annals.”
COLLABORATIONS and chamber music
Kallor was Composer-in-Residence at Tuesday Musical (Akron, Ohio) from 2018-2020, and at SubCulture (New York City) from 2013-2020; his creative partners during these residencies included cellist Joshua Roman, violinist Miranda Cuckson, the Attacca Quartet, the Dover Quartet, the Escher Quartet, accordion/bandoneón player Julien Labro, vocalist Jo Lawry, percussionist Richie Barshay, tap dancer Andrew Nemr, beatboxer Mark Martin, and others.
Recent projects include his Octet, premiered by the Dover and Escher String Quartets, commissioned by Tuesday Musical; Mouthful of Forevers for string orchestra, premiered by the Seattle Youth Symphony, commissioned by Town Hall Seattle; and Some Not Too Distant Tomorrow, a tribute to the humanitarian legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. commissioned by The Classical Recording Foundation and funded by a gift from Stuart and Linda Nelson, which Kallor premiered with the GRAMMY®-winning Attacca Quartet.
Kallor conducted the world premiere of Fred Hersch’s acclaimed jazz theater piece, My Coma Dreams, at Peak Performances at Montclair State University in 2011, and subsequent productions at San Francisco Performances, Miller Theater at Columbia University (this performance was released on DVD), and at the European Society for Intensive Care Medicine in Berlin, Germany.
Kallor's collaborations with filmmaker Alan McIntyre Smith are “a visual feast for the eyes,” writes Feast of Music: “Espresso Nirvana” (a jittery ode to caffeine) and “Broken Sentences,” which features eighty-eight artist-designed pianos that Sing For Hope temporarily placed in public spaces around NYC, where anyone could play them. Gregg did. A lot.
Kallor’s sheet music is available at GreggKallorMusic.com.