We Spektrals and our cohorts laid eyes upon Alice Millar Chapel, the likely site of our recording of Marcos Balter's "Chambers". Hopefully, followers of this blog will remember our long history with this piece. This is the first leak of a long series of forthcoming posts about our first album, featuring a bevy of works by Chicago composers.
Clicking embiggens these pictures.
This March finds us taking a slice of Chicago down-state to Illinois State University's Red Note Festival for new music. We'll bring some of our favorite Windy City composers to Bloomington, including Chris Fisher-Lochhead, Hans Thomalla, Daniel Dehaan and Marcos Balter. We'll cap off the concert with a performance of a piece that's quickly working its way into our favorite repertoire: Elliott Carter's String Quartet No. 2, a work of astonishing breadth of expression and compositional command.
The festival features a full week of performances and a bevy of performing artists, including featured guest composer Joan Tower. We'll be at ISU for two days, with a range of activities including master classes for string students and readings of new works by student composers. We're looking forward to more than just bringing our repertoire to this new place, but discovering the culture around newly composed music at ISU and hearing the new sounds their students are dreaming up.
Illinois State University's Performing Arts Center.
Our week at University of Chicago started with a fantastically fun chamber music reading party with some of the chamber music students in the Music Department. Music by Bach, Mendelssohn and Handel was followed by pizza. (Click the pics for enlarged versions.)
And, the week ended with an epic quartet-fest: three great new works by U of C Graduate students, and our dear friend Albumblatt, by Hans Thomalla.
A primo benefit to being a quartet that plays loads of new music is that we get first-looks at minty fresh scores. Our UChicago New Music Ensemble concert this Saturday is exactly that, and we are all impressed by the imagination and polish of the music featured by their talented composition students.
Phil Taylor's Spandrels is alternate doses of tranquility and eruption, draped across an architecture that keeps the listener satisfyingly rooted in the present. Jae-Goo Lee's Cold and Sharp pulls the camera in tight, examining a shivering and delicate world through microscopic-seeming string techniques. Andrew McManus has proven himself to be a major talent at writing for strings, and his The Sacred and the Profane moves through shades of prismatic harmonics, jazz-like jaunts and vital rhythmic counterpoint before disappearing altogether.
Esteemed Northwestern University faculty composer Hans Thomalla's Albumblatt has quickly become a cornerstone of our repertoire, and we are thrilled to be bringing this perspective-warping piece to Hyde Park to round out the program. Imagine glissandi originating from separate corners within the quartet, converging at microtonally-constructed major chords for just an instant. It makes us throw our hands up and shout, "It's SO GOOD!" every time we rehearse it.
Saturday, Feb. 16 at 8 PM. FREE!
University of Chicago - Fulton Recital Hall (map)
1010 E. 59th Street, Goodspeed Hall, 4th floor
Austin wrote about Hans' piece previously on the blog, and you can see us playing it live at Northwestern University here:
Norman Lebrecht, of the blog Slipped Disc, was kind enough to show interest in our experiences at Juicebox and asked for some thoughts about the experience. Here's what Doyle shared:
3-year-olds love Elliott Carter…at least the 3-year-olds found scurrying beneath the iconic Tiffany dome of Preston Bradley Hall on Friday morning. Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) has launched a fresh new series with the intention of immersing toddlers and their caregivers in contemporary music, dance and theatre, cleverly titled "Juicebox," and Spektral Quartet is thrilled to have been the lead-off ensemble. We are also still wiping Cheerios dust off our strings.
What seems clear to DCASE, and certainly to our quartet, is that listeners have to be taught to bristle or sneer at certain flavors of music. Take Carter's Quartet No. 2, which tends to elicit some of the more emphatic responses, from ecstatic to cynical, from our audiences. We've developed larger-than-life character descriptions for each instrument's role, a self-composed play synopsis for the movements, and had open conversations with each other about the piece in front of the audience prior to performing it in an effort to create a foothold for first-time listeners. This has been encouragingly successful. On the other hand, tell toddlers, "This piece is awesome," play it with gusto, and their response is, "THIS PIECE IS AWESOME!"
For our Juicebox debut, Spektral excerpted Thomas Adès's Arcadiana, Hans Thomalla's Albumblatt, and Marcos Balter's Chambers in addition to the Carter. With the help of Spektral violinist Austin Wulliman's mother Phyllis, who translated our ideas into Toddler, we approached each composer as an explorer. Adès explores the alchemy of painting into sound: parents here rocked with their children back and forth during the fog-veiled gondola ride of Arcadiana's first movement. Thomalla explores the sounds around him in everyday life: violinist Aurelien plays the bariolage measures, likening it to an ambulance siren, and dozens of tiny eyes widen. Balter explores the world as if through a microscope: Phyllis encourages the children to look skyward, and has them pick out a tiny snowflake from among the myriad details of the brilliant, colored glass dome. Finally, the fourth movement and conclusion of Carter's each-instrument-as-independent-character masterpiece is introduced as four people all talking simultaneously, not listening to each other until the second violin reins in the proceedings and restores order. After all, what's a kid's concert without an under-the-radar morality lesson?
At a concert of Mozart for (primarily) septua- and octogenarians the previous evening, one well-intentioned but concerned gentleman asked, "Tonight you're playing for an enthusiastic group of old people who love this music. Who comes to your other shows?" Spektral Quartet has been focused on breaking the fourth wall since its inception, commandeering bars as performance spaces and experimenting with seating the audience up-close, encircling the quartet. We've also prioritized playing works by emerging and local composers, so we were able to respond confidently that our audience is young and open-eared.
Ultimately, it can be distilled down to this: bypassing the need for "un-learning" preconceptions about new music is why the Juicebox series is a powerful artistic venture, and one we will continue to support.
No need to call a babysitter for Spektral's next concert!
We are thrilled to be the lead-off ensemble on the Chicago Dept. of Cultural Affairs brand-new series, Juicebox. Created for pre-kindergarteners and their parents, Juicebox is bringing some of City's most cutting-edge new-music/theatre/dance under the Tiffany dome at the Chicago Cultural Center, transforming it into a kid-friendly performance space. Cheerios in a ziploc? Bring 'em. Feel the need to dance or squeal? Go for it! Forgot your wallet, Mom and Dad? It's free!
Guiding Spektral's all new-music set is early childhood development ace (she raised Austin, after all), Phyllis Wulliman. Conjuring narratives and inspiring children to interact with the music, Phyllis and the Quartet will take the audience on a voyage through the brilliant and evocative scores of Elliott Carter, Hans Thomalla and Thomas Adès.
So pack those diaper bags and join us for a morning of new-music hoopla!*
WHERE Chicago Cultural Center
Preston Bradley Hall
78 E Washington, Chicago
WHEN Friday, Feb1st, 2013
10am
TICKETS Free
*misbehaving parents will be asked to sit in time out chairs for a period of 15min.
This Friday at 7:30 marks the fourth concert we've given in Goshen, Indiana in this quartet's short life. This is no coincidence, as I was born and raised in Goshen and my parents still live there as an active part of the Mennonite community surrounding Goshen College. We've already played Haydn's "Seven Last Words" in the College Church, as well as music by Brahms, Ades and more in the acoustically wonderful Reith Recital Hall in Goshen College's Music Center. You can take a trip back in time to last year's trip in a blog post about our snowy drive, or read about this year's concert on their website.
Goshen College Music Center
We return with a program of music by vocally inspired composers: Verdi, Mozart, Wolf and James Blake (as re-imagined by Chris Fisher-Lochhead). All these composers have an amazing imagination for musical characters: sneaky villains, beautiful heroines and comic fools will all show their face as the musical drama unfolds.
For a little taste of what you'll see at the show, you can see us in a very intimate live performance at Comfort Music this summer:
The folks at Scrag Mountain Music have set the bar high for hospitality. Our week in Vermont wasn't just full of scenic beauty and wonderful people, but some of the best and freshest food we've ever had. Bacon and eggs from around the bend on the mountain never tasted better before a marathon rehearsal day! Mary Bonhag and Evan Premo, directors of the series, were extraordinarily gracious...especially since we had a third host, their two-month-old, Glen!
Here's the story of our week in photos.
Things started off a little slap-happy at O'Hare in the early morning Monday.
We got our stuff into our hosts' homes as the sun set over the Green Mountains.
Our second day there, we rehearsed all day...and then had another public session in the evening. Rehearsing in front of people really makes things more productive in an urgent way if you choose something early in the learning process! Stay tuned for more of these, Mary and Evan's idea of the "Very Open Rehearsal" is a great one.
Our plan of doing a different program each day, Friday through Sunday, meant some long rehearsal days. It wasn't always pretty. Here's Evan, helping us set up for the day with Glen in tow.
Doyle explains the finer point of "balancing to the viola line" to Russ.
And finally in action (fueled by some deliciously Vermont-roasted coffee).
A long day of rehearsal isn't complete without some brown liquid. We went to check out The Prohibition Pig and Aurelien got a taste of some of the local rye flavor made by Whistle Pig.
CUTE ANIMAL BREAK! Here's my new friend, Raven. She was pretty much the best.
Our run of three shows began Friday, we played a piece by Evan with him sitting in and Mary sang a piece by Earl Kim with us. The quartet played Ades' "Arcadiana", the Verdi Quartet and Chris Fisher-Lochhead's version of James Blake's "I Never Learnt to Share". The greeting party didn't bother to clean up for us. (Did you catch the theme of the week yet, as well?)
Saturday, things were a bit more refined for a church concert in Warren. The quartet played Mozart, K. 575 and Marcos Balter's "Chambers". Here's our warmup session with Mary on Earl Kim's "Three French Songs".
That night, it snowed. Vermont is special. I wish I'd taken my phone with me on my run into the countryside that morning. The pastures of cows with no humans to be seen for miles were incredibly beautiful. Here's the barn outside Evan and Mary's house.
Our final concert was in Montpelier, in a local theater. An incredibly open-minded crowd laughed with us as we gave a ten minute presentation and conversation about Carter's Second Quartet, as well as playing Wolf's "Italian Serenade" and repeating Chris' "I Never Learnt to Share" adaptation. Doyle had an intimate moment with his phone before the audience arrived.
Thanks for everything, Scrag Mountain folk and Vermont in general! One thing I won't miss: discussions of the pronunciation of "Montpelier" with Aurelien. It's really embarrassing for all of us when we start trying to pronounce French words.
This week, Spektral gives its first-ever performance of Elliott Carter's String Quartet No. 2 at the National Pastime Theater. I've now had two separate incidents of someone asking me if we decided to play this monumental work after learning of Carter's death. I only wish I traveled with the score, so as to quickly (and passive-aggressively) answer their query. Unpacking this piece, with all it's hocket-ed composite rhythms and wickedly-challenging passagework, has been an experience equally frustrating and gratifying for us. This is Carter, though. That's what HE DOES.
The title of the show is a quote from the man himself, that reads: "An auditory scenario for the players to act out with their instruments." It is not specifically tied to Quartet No. 2, but it closely parallels the individuality of each part, or character, around which Carter wrote this score. Aurelien's imaginative synopsis of the "plot" will be included in the program, and each of us will offer descriptions from the stage of who we feel our character is.
I thought I'd preempt Wednesday's show by giving you my (unauthorized by my quartet-mates) film analogies to these personalities. The concert is BYOB, so with enough rye in your flask, these will make perfect sense…
Austin:
Aurelien:
Doyle:
Russ:
Tickets are $5 cheaper in advance. See you on Wednesday!
As a freshman in high school, I signed up for an email listserv focusing on 20th century music. Being from a small college town in Indiana, I hadn't had much exposure to classical music written after the Rite of Spring. At this point in my life, I hadn't even really considered the possibility of playing the violin professionally. In fact, my sentiments as recently as a year before would have led me to prefer prioritizing my spot on the wrestling team over playing a note on the violin ever again.
But, around my fifteenth birthday I began discovering music again, and finding that that the weirder it was the more I wanted to hear it. I wanted more than just to know about it, I wanted to "get it". This listserv proved pivotal in my musical development, even if I only followed it for a month and they never discussed much of what I now consider to be truly avante-garde.
A message discussing a disc of Boulez conducting Varese piqued my interest. Who was this Varese guy? However, I quickly found that the headliner of the disc (as far as my project to digest wildly new musical styles was concerned) was clearly the "Symphony of Three Orchestras" by Elliott Carter.
From the devastating Hart Crane quote in the liner notes to the sheer volume of musical ideas bursting from this piece, I knew I had found something I truly did not understand. But, it was a revelation. In not understanding, I saw a vast landscape of music in front of me, shrouded in fog. I couldn't even begin to know where the horizon was.
It was exhilarating to have this work take over my world so completely, with its impossibly expressive lines interacting in ways that never ceased to amaze. Listening to the piece again now, I feel lucky to have found it when I did. Just months later, when my private instructor planted the seed of working to be a professional violinist in my mind, visions of playing new and exciting music inspired me to take on the challenge.
To this day my perceptions of musical expression and time are being influenced and changed by Carter's infinitely subtle and sensitive art. In fact, as this blog post goes live, I will be rehearsing the fourth movement of his Second String Quartet with my mates in Spektral Quartet. Every rehearsal reveals the lines more clearly, hearing how they interact and converse in the most organic, yet unexpected, ways.
Just yesterday, as I walked out of a rehearsal of the quartet, my facebook feed was filled with memorials to Carter and his work. I can think of no more fitting way to find out of his passing than from my peers. His music will be a constant in our lives, an unavoidable pillar of the American canon. I know my story is far from special - many of us were introduced to the deep questioning and probing expression of great new music through Elliott Carter's work.
City of Tomorrow cross-pollinating with Levek
This weekend marked out first trip to Milwaukee for a concert at the Unruly Music Festival. We had a fantastic day, beginning with a workshop with students and ending with a concert at the Marcus Center's Vogel Hall.
Friday, the day before the trip. We rehearsed from nine in the morning 'til four in the afternoon, and just before we left we discussed the last details of our travels the next day.
Saturday morning, after reading sketches by University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee (our hosts) for works they'll complete for the spring edition of the festival.
Alterra Coffee for lunch! We got a little excited.
Arrival in the Marcus Center.
Diving into the ritual of setting up for tech rehearsal of Black Angels.
It's almost showtime...
We're outta here! What's Aurelien looking at?
It's a reveler too drunk to stay on his bike! Luckily the police are here to help him.
We're incredibly excited, thrilled, pumped up and stoked to be playing one of the first concerts in the amazing new Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago. If you're reading this blog, you probably know that we were recently named Ensemble in Residence at U. of C., so it feels particularly fitting to be launching our brand-spanking-new residency with a performance in a brand new venue. There's an entire festival of events this weekend, and we hope we'll see you in the Performance Hall for our show on Friday.
But, this building is way more than just a new concert hall. This is a ten story building with a unique "Performance Loft" on the 9th floor with this view (clicking photos makes 'em get big!):
It's an architectural wonder with many amazing corridors and open spaces:
It asserts itself in the Hyde Park landscape boldly:
And, it has space for a full range of artistic activities. But, that's not why you're here. We're so excited about the new concert hall in this building. We had the chance to try it out last spring (before it was fully completed) when the team from Kirkegaard Associates was in town to see how their work was sounding. Here we are, getting used to a stage we hope to take many times:
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.
