Kâla Quartet

The Kâla Quartet was founded in 2020 by Lilya Chifman, Seamus Mc Namarra, Salomé Kirklar and Loris Sikora. It has performed at the Musique à Flaine festival, among others, and took part in the Geneva International String Academy in 2022 with Lilya Chifman and Diane Cavard on violin, Salomé Kirklar on viola and Loris Sikora on cello.

Lilya Chifman, born in Pontoise in 2000, studied at the Conservatoire à rayonnement régional in Paris with Larissa Kolos and Florin Szigeti (diploma in 2014, advanced prize in 2017, concert prize in 2018), then joined Marianne Piketty’s class at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Lyon in 2018. A keen chamber musician, she formed a string quartet and a piano trio there with fellow students and attended masterclasses with Alfred Brendel, Pierre Colombet and Guillaume Sutre. Winner of the CNSMD concerto competition in 2020, she played Prokofiev’s First Concerto at the Auditorium de Lyon under Alexandre Bloch; she also performs with the Trio Parhélie.

Diane Cavard began the violin at the age of four at the Clermont-Ferrand conservatoire, joined Manuel Solans’s class in Gennevilliers in 2019 and then the CNSMD de Lyon, where she studied with Marianne Piketty, Harvey De Sousa and Manuel Solans until her master’s degree. With the Gallus Quartet she performed at the Auditorium de Lyon in 2024 alongside the Kronos Quartet and the Quatuor Debussy. Since December 2024 she has been a second violin in the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine.

Salomé Kirklar studied for her master’s degree in viola at the CNSMD de Lyon, where her teachers included Françoise Gnéri, Wolfram Christ and Michel Michalakakos; she is also the violist of the Quatuor Alberta. Loris Sikora, born in Nice in 1996, studied at the CNSMD de Lyon with Yvan Chiffoleau and Pascal Jemain, and then with Emmanuelle Bertrand.