Roll over, Beethoven: The KALM Quartet is here to stay.
Hollister – Roll over, Beethoven: The KALM Quartet is here to stay.
Named for the first letter of each musicians’ name, the newest string quartet to hit the area is four ambitious high school students who are eager to share their passion for classical music with the community, especially the youth.
“Classical music has a bad rep of being just for old people,” said Lindsay McIntosh, a violist and senior at San Benito High School. “We’d like to introduce it to kids and to younger people, because there’s so much great stuff about it that a lot of people don’t know.”
Kimia Ghaderi and Andrew Wisneski, both students at Live Oak High School, play violins in the quartet. Maura Cuffie plays the cello and is a freshman at Notre Dame High School in San Jose.
The four friends went to school together at Martin Murphy Middle School in South San Jose and have remained in contact largely because of their musical endeavors. Cuffie and McIntosh played in the South Valley Symphony through 2003, and McIntosh and Ghaderi currently play in the San Jose Youth Symphony. Ghaderi also plays in the California Youth Symphony along with Wisneski. All four want to at least keep playing music in the future, if not make it their living.
“My dream is to play with the Detroit City Orchestra,” McIntosh said. “I was born there and grew up there, and I’d always go to performances when I was really little, and I always loved it.”
The quartet has its own unofficial chauffeur and manager – Gaylis Ghaderi, Kimia’s mother. As an early childhood educator, Gaylis Ghaderi said she’s disappointed with the lack of opportunity in the South Bay Area for children to get involved with music, especially strings.
“There’s such a need for a program like that here, and there are strings players here,” she said. “But there are no programs in schools to encourage that, and we’re hoping we can promote this kind of music at that level.”
The quartet meets weekly at the Ghaderi’s home in Morgan Hill to rehearse, not under a teacher’s watchful eye but under their own guidance. Each member has been playing instruments since they were very young, they said, and the music they play now is at the professional level.
A major goal of KALM is to bring more string music to the South Bay Area, especially in schools and youth organizations. Right now, the members travel to San Jose and Palo Alto for lessons, symphony visits and other music-related events, but they’d like to see more of those opportunities available in closer proximity.
Members of KALM agreed wholeheartedly that learning to play music, especially at a young age, encourages children to achieve excellence in school and become a more well-rounded person.
“You learn to get along with other people even if you don’t like them, because it’s the music that counts,” McIntosh said. “And I think it gives you a lot of self-confidence, too.”
The quartet performed a few weeks ago at a fund raiser for Rebekah Children’s Home in Gilroy and returned Monday to play for children who receive care at the center. While the musicians played, they encouraged the kids to touch the instruments and feel the vibrations.
“When children hear music on the radio, they hear the bass and think that’s all that’s real,” Gaylis Ghaderi said. “But once you get a kid in front of a real instrument and they’re seeing where the music comes from, you can’t tear them away.”
Even though it just formed in October, the quartet has been booked solid this holiday season, including appearances at Saint Louise Regional Hospital and Pacific Manor in Morgan Hill. Future plans may call for paying gigs, but for now, the musicians said they’re focused on community service.
“That comes first for us,” Ghaderi said, “and then maybe other stuff later.”
Katie Niekerk is a staff writer. Reach her at 408-847-7097 or kn******@gi************.com.
