CONTENT COURTESY AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL ACADEMY OF MUSIC
Melina van Leeuwen (harp), Katie Yap (viola, pictured above), and Kiran Phatak (flute) form the Chrysalis Trio. These musicians, who met during their studies at ANAM, are currently on their first national tour together as an ensemble. Here, they take you behind the scenes.
What drew you to your respective instruments?
KATIE: The viola is a funny instrument – it’s the middle child of the string instrument family, and so is sometimes overlooked, or mistaken for the violin. I started off my musical life as a violinist and switched over to the viola when I was 15. Its husky, elusive tone intrigued me in a way that the violin never did, and I love the way it works in a small ensemble – sometimes a middle harmony, sometimes working as a bass line, and sometimes taking a haunting melody. You can really experience the music from the inside when you play the viola!
MELINA: I am a harpist because of Xanya Mamunya, my first harp teacher. The inspiration she gave me will last my lifetime. I first met Xanya at a chamber music concert where, at the age of five, I ran away from my parents and rushed over to her at the end of the concert and began arranging my first lesson. My parents gently attempted to delay my study, but I would not be dissuaded. I knew what I wanted, and that was to spend time each week with this fascinating woman and her strange instrument.
KIRAN: The singing quality of the flute drew me in and hasn’t let go to this day. The flute is unique among wind instruments in that it doesn’t have any ‘resistance’ to blow against — like a clarinet or oboe reed, or a brass mouthpiece — so it feels extraordinarily free and open to play. There’s nothing between you and your voice; that’s why I love it.
What has been the most memorable moment of your professional career so far?
KATIE: In 2018, I was playing a chamber music tour with Van Diemen’s Band, a baroque ensemble based in Tasmania. We were performing in UKARIA, at the top of Mt Barker in the Adelaide Hills. The communication between every player and the audience was palpable – it felt like we had lines of energy connecting everyone present, sharing an unspoken sense of what it is to be human, and feeling the joy in that moment.
MELINA: My most memorable moment was not a performance experience, but a realisation I had after filling in as guest principal for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in 2017. After walking off stage, I suddenly felt a huge sensation of belonging, such as I had never experienced before in an orchestral setting. I had previously been unsure of whether I would be happy being an orchestral musician on a permanent basis, but that ambivalence just went away and I knew I could always do this job, and always love it.
KIRAN: Playing the Mozart Flute Quartet in D at the Perth International Arts Festival in 2017, with the Australian String Quartet. I was on stage in my hometown, playing one of my favourite pieces, with one of the best string quartets in the world — I couldn’t believe it was actually happening!
Tell us about this touring ensemble and the music you’ll be performing.
KATIE: Melina was the one who first had the idea for Chrysalis. We formed in 2013, while we were all students at the Australian National Academy of Music. Melina wanted to form a harp trio, and she asked us to play the Debussy Sonata with her. Through the weeks and months of intense rehearsals, tutorials and performances of this piece, we discovered how our listening changed as we played with instruments so unlike our own. Now, instead of imitating another wind or string instrument, we were finding colours that overlapped the three different instrument groups. For our rehearsal breaks, we would walk up to the Royal Botanic Gardens, and discovered our shared love of nature. Through those spring afternoons, we came across our name – Chrysalis Trio.
MELINA: Ours is a difficult combination to write for. This is partly because the concert grand harp is a relatively new instrument. While it is true that the original double-action mechanism was patented by Sebastian Erard in France in 1809, it took many years for double-action harps to be mastered by harpists and, in turn, for composers to write for them. By the end of the 19th Century, the mechanism had much improved, and some of our first truly idiomatic repertoire was written at the beginning of the 20th Century— an example of which is the Debussy Trio, the work that our group was formed around. Today, unfortunately, the negative stigma of the harp as a difficult instrument persists. We are very excited to have the opportunity to present works that prove this stigma to be worth overcoming.
KIRAN: The combination of flute, viola, and harp is such a special one. Sometimes, the instruments in chamber ensembles can cover each other up and it can be a struggle to find a balance. This is not at all the case for our combination! It always seems as though the special qualities of each instrument are enhanced by the others; the flute seems more silvery and fluid; the viola seems more plaintive and soulful; and the harp seems more angelic and ethereal. And the blend that we can achieve is a pleasure to be a part of — a melding of sound that one rarely experiences. We’re playing an exciting mix of repertoire on this tour. The program is based around the Debussy Trio — our formative piece as an ensemble and a brilliant, enthralling, magical work. I’m personally so looking forward to playing our commission for this tour — a new work by Australian composer Natalie Williams. There is such a paucity of Australian works for our combination, and I think Natalie will make a valuable and original contribution to the canon.
What do you enjoy doing when you’re not performing, practising, or rehearsing?
KATIE: Anyone who’s known me for more than a few days knows of my addiction to baking. Stick around long enough and you’ll definitely end up with a cake or some biscuits! I also love gardening, bushwalking and bird watching.
MELINA: I like cooking (savoury, easier to improvise), reading novels (I’ve just finished Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun — amazing!), playing video games, watching movies, being outdoors with my dog (Marnie the toy cavoodle), dancing and listening to good tunes with friends. A less hobby-ish interest is my love of philosophy. Whilst at university I specialised in German phenomenology and environmental ethics.
KIRAN: When I’m not playing music I’m either reading, writing, or enjoying nature. Give me a small cabin in the woods filled with books, and I’d be happy forever!
Keep up to date with the Chrysalis Trio’s national tour dates on the ANAM website.
Images supplied.
