Celtic trio Kalos is making five stops in NM: Find out where you can see them

Musical trio Kalos is bringing its unique sound to New Mexico with five stops on their “Winter Southwest” tour. The group will play in Silver City, Las Cruces, Gallup, Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

“We try not to hold ourselves to any kind of stylistic corner, so we just play what goes right between the three of us,” Eric McDonald, Kalos guitarist, said, “but because we all come from Celtic music, that’s always present.”

McDonald said that the band’s music is rooted in Northern Celtic and traditional folk music. However, they do not hold themselves to only that genre.

He said he is drawn to the musical connections between the past and present.

“The connective tissue of it is what I love about a traditional piece. It’s something that’s lasted hundreds of years,” McDonald said, “and if you play it or connect to it, it’s got this direct kind of brain-to-brain connection with somebody who you have no idea anything about, but you can have this connection to them.”

McDonald said he grew up around classical music and later fell into Celtic music through contra dancing, a traditional folk dance featuring Celtic music.

The band will be releasing its new album “Tamarack” in April. The album name comes from a deciduous conifer tree.

“We like to think of that as a symbol of the North,” McDonald said, “and for our second album (as a trio), it’s like a refresh.”

McDonald’s bandmates, Ryan McKasson and Jeremiah McLane, had their own reasons for being drawn to the Celtic genre. It became the bond that shaped their band’s sound.

They primarily perform with guitar, fiddle and accordion, though they often include other instruments and voices to create a unique musical texture.

“There’s a sort of a chamber feel to it …,” McDonald said. “This combination of strings and reeds and things like that is not something you would hear in an orchestra.”

He said they model themselves after a chamber group with their stark instrumentation, and as the audience listens, there is a mix of melancholy and high-energy music.

“I think one of our goals is to take people through a range of emotions, and we feed off of them,” McDonald said.

Elizabeth Secor is an arts fellow from the New Mexico Local News Fellowship program. You can reach her at esecor@abqjournal.com.