Sarah Forbes Orwig joins Spektral's Board of Directors
Photo Credit: Elliot Mandel
Spektral Quartet NFP's Board of Directors is pleased to welcome Sarah Forbes Orwig as its newest member! Sarah has long been a Spektral fan and booster, and we feel fortunate to have her joining our team.
Sarah grew up in Saint Louis, Missouri, and has lived in Chicago since 1999 with her husband, Clark Costen. After working as an editor for publications such as Women’s Wear Daily, W Magazine, and Reader’s Digest, she took a career break to earn a Ph.D. from Boston University, where she studied sociology with Peter L. Berger and was a fellow of the Institute for the Study of Economic Culture. She then returned to the publishing world, serving as the social sciences editor for Encyclopaedia Britannica for eight years before joining the American Bar Association as an executive editor for book publishing. In 2014, she joined the board of Rush Hour Concerts and continues as a board member for the new International Music Foundation.
She is also involved with an archive digitization program for the American Youth Foundation, serves as a deacon for Fourth Presbyterian Church, helped launch a summer concert series for Washington Square Park, and organized a program on gun violence for the ABA’s staff diversity council.
Writing about why she is eager to join our board, Sarah says: "I admire Spektral’s unique brand of verve, wit, and disciplined, artful expression. The combination promises to touch both new and established audiences who seek excellence in classical and new music."
In their free time, she and Clark spend time on their sailboat, and we knew she was our kind of people when she shared this video of a recent camera mishap out on the water, titled The Two Stooges
Spektral Quartet Raises Over $4,000 for GirlForward
We are pleased to announce that we raised $4,150 for GirlForward, a Chicago-based non-profit organization dedicated to creating and enhancing opportunities for refugee girls.
For our Chicago premiere of Morton Feldman’s Quartet No. 2 on March 11th, we issued a challenge to attendees: for any concertgoer who stayed with us for the entirety of the five-hour epic, a donation would be made in their name to GirlForward.
Generously funded by key supporters, board members, and audience members, the Feldman Forward initiative aimed to take advantage of the enhanced visibility surrounding our performance by adding this charitable dimension. GirlForward was selected as the beneficiary based on strong recommendations from the community, as well as the organization’s relatively small size and potential impact this gift could make.
Read more about this amazing organization on their website: https://www.girlforward.org/
Explore "HACK" with new interactive video player
Composer Chris Fisher-Lochhead's Hack for string quartet takes its inspiration and musical materials from an unlikely source: the vocal stylings of stand-up comedians. Chris carefully transcribed the pitch, rhythm, and cadence of 16 great comics of the past and present, and composed a piece of music with a completely unique harmonic world and sense of flow .
We've created this custom video player so that you can explore Chris's ingenious musical character study with two classic bits from Dave Chappelle and Sarah Silverman.
Hit play and then move the slider to crossfade between the original audio and the quartet music. (Note: this player works best on a desktop browser, and does not work at all on iOS.)
For a more in-depth look into the process of creating Hack, see Chris's 6-part blog series at Hack UnPacked
Hack is featured on our new album Serious Business, now available on the Sono Luminus record label. Find it on Amazon, iTunes, and Google Play
Ringmasters: Marc Mellits
Marc Mellits is a force to be reckoned with in the contemporary music world, having composed a huge number of works for the full range of classical ensembles. He's frequently commissioned for major works by orchestras and top chamber groups, including Kronos Quartet, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the Bang on a Can All-Stars just to name a few.
His style is marked by a driving rhythmic style that still has no shortage of soaring melodies and arrestingly intimate moments. But, he describes himself as frequently a "miniaturist" so he seemed like a perfect fit for our Mobile Miniatures project. We couldn't be happier to have him on board.
His energetic style and puckish spirit are on full display here:
Ringmasters: Mason Bates
Mason Bates is just starting his fifth year of residency with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, "the Ferrari of orchestras" in his words. This is no faint praise from someone whose work is performed constantly by some of the top ensembles in the world, and is in constant demand both as a composer and in his alter-ego form, DJ Masonic.
Make sure to check out his website for his regularly updated blog and his Facebook page for tons of interesting updates about his high-flying musical activities. He's been a driving force behind "Mercury Soul" which has brought some tradition-breaking genre-crossing to the Chicago Symphony's season. The high-energy evenings of Mercury Soul have some of the same sense for freeing up audience expectations for contemporary classical music and bringing a level of familiarity to peoples' surroundings that we aim for in our Sampler Packs, so we hope to count Mason as a kindred spirit in his aims to open up the possibilities and venues for new music.
If you're looking to energize your day, check out his orchestral lift-off, Mothership:
Ringmasters: Nico Muhly
I remember my first encounter with Nico Muhly mostly because it coincides with the beginning of my torrid love affair with new music. I had recently been added to the Chicago Symphony's MusicNow roster and the series had the good sense to program Nico's Step Team for its 2007 season. I remember being sucked in by the magnetic groove of the piece, with its metric expansions and contractions providing a steady dose of adrenaline during late-night rehearsals. What I remember even more vividly, though, is how gracious Nico was throughout the process.
Also, that he had a better haircut than me.
If you've perhaps been living in a WiFi-less dirigible for the past seven years or so, and haven't heard his music, check out Mother Tongue or I Drink the Air Before Me or 2012's Drones and get ready for some gorgeously sculpted sound.
Nico has a new opera, Two Boys, going up at the Met next month, so Spektral is especially grateful and excited that he's making the time to pen us a ringtone for Mobile Miniatures. Prepare to be the envy of the subway the next time your phone rings with a swanky Nico jam. Prepare to be John the Baptist, Salome-style if you neglect to silence it before heading into your local opera house...
Last Words?
a guest post by Elizabeth Davenport, Dean of Rockefeller Chapel
The first time I heard Spektral Quartet play I thought, “It would be out of this world to get these guys to come and play at Rockefeller Chapel.” And now it’s happening! Seven days from now, to be precise: March 28, 2013. They’re going to play Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ in the context of a dramatic liturgical moment of the year – the Tenebrae of the night before Good Friday, a night when we strip the Chapel bare of all the extras, candles and fabrics and silver.
Rockefeller Chapel is a vast space. The word “chapel” conjures up an intimate space, but it really means a private space – like the chapel of a stately home, or of a hospital, or of an airport… or, in this case, of a university. Rockefeller Chapel is the spiritual and ceremonial center of the University of Chicago, where the Spektral Quartet is ensemble in residence.
Rockefeller Chapel is a place where we engage in art and performance on a large scale, matching its eighty-foot high arches and resonant stone with grandeur of sound and beauty of image and word. It’s a place where we speak to the nobility of our human quest for meaning and our great capacity for awe, as generations before us intended for us to do. It’s a place where people of many different traditions find a spiritual home. Designed after the shape of a great medieval cathedral, it’s used today in ways which mirror the world’s changing patterns of human religious encounter. But, as it was at the beginning, it’s still a place where the liturgical seasons of the Christian year are observed, along with its many other uses.
And so we gather for the solemn ceremonies of Holy Thursday – a short, stark, bare celebration at the altar, with bread and wine and hardly any music, and then the sounds of Haydn, the slow movements of the Seven Last Words, ringing through the gradually darkening building in the première of a new Spektral arrangement prepared by their friend and collaborator Joe Clark. And with it, the last words of Christ as recorded in sacred text, juxtaposed with poetry. We use poetry often at the Chapel, finding in its art a means of touching truths of new kinds (in an era where once unquestioned beliefs no longer make sense to many). On this night, we will use poetry written at or after the unthinkable death of one too young to die – a mother mourning the death of her son, which is after all part of the time-honored script of the crucifixion.
Last words. One poem for each “word,” and the closing heart-rending words of Psalm 22 (“my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). The terrible knock at the door in the early hours of the morning… the police officer standing there and saying, “I’m sorry.” And then il terremoto, the earthquake, the fast, furious presto, the sudden, sharp end.
It’s an experiment, like much of what we do. We haven’t done Holy Thursday quite like this before, and Haydn’s cherished work hasn’t been played quite like this before. But in this space, and on this night, the script is rewritten. Rewritten for today, for now, for the mothers who have lost their sons and daughters, for the young caught up in the violence that tears us apart, now as then.
We read and we listen – and perhaps we gain some new insight into the old, old story, and for sure we hear afresh Haydn’s achingly beautiful writing. And we mourn for the lives lost, for the tragedy of it all. And yet, even in despair, we find some fragment of hope – some chord that lifts us out of our reverie, some new thing, some sense (as is the promise of Easter) that there is more to come.
If you’re anywhere near Chicago on March 28, I hope you’ll be there (7 pm at Rockefeller Chapel at Woodlawn and 59th). And if you’re not anywhere near Chicago, please make your travel arrangements now. You should not miss the Spektral Quartet offering their magnificent artistry in this most wondrous of spaces on this most solemn of nights… with their very own re-imagining of this beloved music.
Old Man and the C: Familiar Territory
Soon after Spektral cracked its first six-pack, reading through quartets and wondering if we wanted to gallop off chasing windmills, we decided that taking this particular brand of music into unexpected locales was a must. We would head to a bar after our shows. Our audience heads to a bar after shows. Why not save us all a bit of shoe leather? And so the Sampler Pack tradition was born. We'd start each season with a single-movement and short piece menu at one of our favorite haunts, The Empty Bottle.
Prior to our third time packing the Bottle mid-week, I was approached by the venue's owner to inquire whether or not I'd like to curate a new-music series there. Chicago has no shortage of new-music ensembles, and most are looking to add dates to their schedules, so of course I replied with an Omar Little-ian: "InDEED!" And now Chicago may add The (Un)familiar Music Series to its roster, with yours truly selecting the talent.
The second installment of (Un)familiar arrived on Oct 24th, with Fischoff Chamber Music Competition gold-medal-winners The City of Tomorrow.
Featuring Chicago's own Andrew Nogal on oboe, this new-music-evangelizing woodwind quintet had the dubious distinction of being an early-adopter of a brand-spanking-new endeavor, so the crowd was unsurprisingly diminutive. Gainesville, FL rockers Levek, who held the late slot that night, made up the front row of the audience, and were the most vocal about their post-show love of Berio, Salonen and Lang.
City of Tomorrow cross-pollinating with Levek
Esa-Pekka Salonen: "Memoria"
Taking a cue from Spektral's approach to playing to new faces at the Bottle, COT interjected anecdotes from its tour, the best of which revolved around David Lang's minimalist quintet, "Breathless." A woman had approached the band after a recent show to express her admiration of the music-making, but soon went long in the face and admonished them never, ever to play the Lang in public again. The piece can be confrontational for the audience in its loquacious unison and octave repetitions, and the tale drew laughs from the crowd, but the story reminded me of why it is so important for us new-music junkies to get these scores out of the concert hall on occasion. Even a negative response is a response, and chances are quite good that a large quotient of the uninitiated in a bar setting won't hear this music unless we drag Manhassets in and perform like our lives depend on it. Which they do.
"David Lang: "Breathless"
City of Tomorrow played magnificently on their (Un)familiar debut, and more than a few attendees were introduced to the awesomesauce of Luciano Berio with the band's delivery of "Ricorrenze."
Andrew Nogal (oboe) and Elise Blatchford (flute)
There are four more (Un)familiar shows coming up this year, including our next offering with Chicago Q Ensemble on Feb. 13th. Do yourself a favor. Pony up some small bills, get your hand stamped, grab a beer at the bar and find out just what Spektral has gotten stirred up in our fair city.
An Exciting Announcement
Hey all!
We are excited to announce that the University of Chicago's Department of Music has appointed us "Ensemble-in-Residence" beginning this fall! We will be performing in concerts, giving workshops, coaching chamber music, and collaborating with the vaunted composition department all year long. Read our full press release below, and we hope to see you in Hyde Park some time this season.
All best,
Aurelien, Austin, Doyle and Russ
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For immediate release:
The Spektral Quartet is thrilled to announce its new post as Ensemble-In-Residence at the University of Chicago's Department of Music beginning in the 2012/2013 academic year. Having served as orchestral, chamber and private lesson coaches for the University's string students during 2011/2012, the Chicago-based group will become Hyde Park regulars in both pedagogical and performance capacities through this formalized position.
Champions of new music, and specifically Chicago composers, Spektral will be working closely with the University’s composition faculty and students through its participation in the New Music Ensemble. The University Chamber and Symphony Orchestras will receive regular sectional coachings from the foursome, as will the student string chamber ensembles, who will be given professional guidance and rehearsal technique primers through Spektral's interactive workshops. Each academic quarter, the quartet will perform its signature new-cum-traditional concerts for the neighborhood's residents, faculty and students.
The Spektral Quartet inaugurates its new relationship with University of Chicago with a performance of works by Hugo Wolf, Joseph Haydn and George Crumb as part of the Logan Launch Festival, celebrating the opening of the brand-new Logan Center for the Arts and its acoustically excellent Performance Hall. The concert takes place on Friday, October 12, at 8:00pm at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th Street. Admission is free.
Old Man and the Screen
On Thursday morning we performed at a private home for a man who is no longer able to leave the house for luxuries such as concerts. A director of over two hundred films, you've undoubtedly seen his name listed near the top of a set of end credits as they scroll up and out of sight. Lest you assume this was some display of vanity, summoning a quartet to his home, our outing was at the request of the family for a father/grandfather/husband nearing the end of his life. One whose love of music is profound. A director who during his career frequently insisted on hiring a film composer and orchestra for his projects' soundtracks. Let's call him The Director.
The Director is infirm, but there are no IV carts or humming machines inhibiting his movement or the subtle one-corner-of-the-mouth smile that appears when the incorrigible violist of said quartet makes a crack about how "This house is great, but it could really use a painting or two" (we played beneath a Miró not one but two Siquieroses). Sitting beneath a towering, 12' totem as the family and guests absconded for post-concert sandwiches, The Director guided my questions about his work toward discussions of the music within them. Then we agreed that Stephen Daldry's 2002 picture, The Hours, was only The Hours because of the architecture of the Phillip Glass score buoying it. A family friend rounded the couch to ask, without malice (or understanding), if our intention was to "Do this music full-time." The Director's knowing smile squelched any desire on my part for a snide retort. Had The Director and I been at some high-society soiree back in his more agile days, we would have snuck in a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle and one-upped each other on disparaging the collagen-jobs parading around the room.
The gratitude of The Director's wife and two adult children was heartfelt and earnest, and as we headed down the front steps, my thoughts began to coalesce: this Haydn and Brahms and Ravel could very well be the last bit of live Kammermusik The Director will experience. It's perhaps morbid to say, and yet the fact remains that this man misses concerts so deeply that his family was ultimately inspired to make the request. Music is vital to more than just musicians.
The only people likely to read this are the proverbial preached-to choir, but I'd venture to guess that this thought has surfaced, epiphany-like, for you as well at some singular moment. Hopefully, and likely, more than once.
Spektral has made every effort to create an event in Theatre of War that moves the dynamic of the concert as temporally-restricted art-moment to something with more tenacity. From the donation of ticket proceeds to the Vet Art Project to the post-concert interviews to the impact of each piece included on the program, it's all built to be like a handprint in hardening concrete. The kind of performance that moves beyond Holy-shit-how-do-they-play-in-
Thanks to The Director for reminding me that this is the kind of music I want to make.
Photo Gallery: Miami in February!
The Spektrals are apart this week, with Doyle and I down in Miami to play the Bach B-Minor Mass with an amazing choir called Seraphic Fire and their sister organization, Firebird Chamber Orchestra.
The organization brings players and singers from around the country for 4 to 5 concerts a season. Doyle has been playing with them for quite some time, and he has graciously wrangled invitations for Aurelien in the past, and for me this time around. (Thanks, Doyle!)
As you might imagine, I jumped at the opportunity to spend a week in Miami in February, and already it's been quite a trip. The orchestra has put me up with a host family here in Miami, and not just any host family. I'm lucky to be hosted by Ruth and Marvin Sacker, who for many years have been avid and thorough archival collectors of typographical art, amassing one of the largest collections in the states with over 50,000 different works! Their home, a penthouse aparmtment formerly owned by latin superstar "El Puma," (no joke) is a museum of sorts, and I have spent the better part of the last 48 hours examining some truly beautiful and inspiring pieces that are on display.
Here's a little photo album with some shots of Miami, the Sackner apartment, and some of the phenomenal art in their home. Enjoy!
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