The INNERchamber String Quartet joins with double bassists Ian Whitman and Dan Armstrong for his or her subsequent live performance, titled Darkish With Extreme Brilliant. The live performance takes place Might 25 at Manufacturing facility 163 in Stratford, Ontario, and provides a finale to their fifteenth live performance season.
The INNERchamber String Quartet is Andrew Chung (violin), Allene Chomyn (violin), Judith Davenport (viola), and Ben Bolt-Martin (cello). Their objective is to broaden on the standard live performance corridor expertise for audiences. Their live shows provide each in-person and video on demand entry, and scrumptious meals out there to associate with the music.
The Music
This system explores numerous themes.
- Missy Mazzoli (b. 1980) Darkish With Extreme Brilliant
- Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942) String Quartet No. 2
- Caroline Shaw (b. 1982) Entr’acte
- Dan Armstrong (b. 1953) Macbeth Haiku Variations, Ney-ney Weleba
“It’s uncommon, and on the similar time an ideal luxurious, to have two double basses on one program! When Ian Whitman (bassist) approached me about performing this beautiful work by Missy Mazzoli, titled Darkish With Extreme Brilliant, I used to be excited to take it on due to the bass soloist facet of the piece, inside a chunk of chamber music. From there we added numerous items that even have nice impression for the listener, but additionally exhibit a substantial amount of distinction and dynamic vary. Items by Caroline Shaw, after which by Dan Armstrong (the opposite bassist on this system) are each impactful and enjoyable. I really like the work of Erwin Schulhoff, and I’m glad that we’re performing his wild String Quartet No. 2 for the primary time.
“This can be a terrific strategy to cap off our fifteenth season, one I’m very pleased with for its breadth of music, carried out at a really excessive degree. Each live performance this season has bought out for tickets, and this speaks to the eagerness and willingness of our great viewers to permit their curiosity and creativeness to soar as we discover music collectively,” says Inventive Director Andrew Chung in a press release.
Dadaism and Music
Dadaism is a motion that’s most frequently related to visible or literary arts, nonetheless, it had an impression on the music world as effectively. At its core, Dadaism is about rejected the normal and embracing not solely change, however change which will push the envelope in the direction of the absurd and nonsensical, anti-bourgeois and anti-art expressions.
Widespread parts of Dadaist music embrace noise, avenue sounds, and unconventional instrumentation.
The motion gained reputation within the WWI period, round 1915, as a critique of the so-called logic and cause that govern capitalism and warfare.
Erwin Schulhoff: String Quartet No. 2
Austro-Czech composer and pianist Erwin Schulhoff was, like Kafka and Mahler, a German Jew. He was one of many earliest composers of artwork music to inject the full of life fringe of jazz into his work, and Dadaism was simply one of many modes he utilized in his music.
His life story is marked by the wars. His father, a wool and cotton service provider, misplaced his fortune within the inflationary instances of the Nineteen Twenties, and later, throughout WWII, Erwin was deported to a focus camp, the place he died in 1942 on the age of 48.
Schulhoff was a prodigy whose expertise was obvious on the early age of three. His mom consulted Dvořák, who notoriously disliked baby prodigies. After testing his means to acknowledge pitch and concord, the composer gave Erwin a few sweets, and beneficial piano research on the Prague Conservatory. Schulhoff studied in Prague, and later in Vienna, Leipzig and Cologne.
He grew to become pen associates with Alban Berg and Schoenberg, however was interested in the Dada motion in Dresden throughout the interval between the wars. His music presents a light-weight, even foolish temper that casts a skeptical and significant eye on the world that was unfolding round him. His second string quartet was written in 1925.
Missy Mazzoli: Darkish With Extreme Brilliant
Mazzoli’s piece is without doubt one of the few works to place the double bass into the highlight as a solo instrument. Her piece reveals the devices tonal and color vary. Within the composition notes, Mazzioli writes,
“‘Darkish with extreme vivid,’ a phrase from Milton’s Paradise Misplaced, is a surreal and evocative description of God, written by a blind man. I really like the impossibility of this phrase, and felt it was a surprisingly correct strategy to describe the darkish however heartrending sound of the double bass itself.”
The work remembers and repurposes string methods from throughout the centuries, primarily based on patterns of modified, repeated chords. It was commissioned by the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Aurora Orchestra in London, and first carried out in 2018.
Ian Whitman performs because the soloist.
Caroline Shaw: Entr’acte
American composer Caroline Shaw is the recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Music, a number of GRAMMY awards, and different accolades. In her notes, she writes,
“Entr’acte was written in 2011 after I heard the Brentano Quartet play Haydn’s Op. 77, No. 2 — with their spare and soulful shift to the D-flat main trio within the minuet. It’s structured like a minuet and trio, riffing on that classical kind however taking it somewhat additional. I really like the way in which some music (just like the minuets of Op. 77) immediately takes you to the opposite facet of Alice’s wanting glass, in a form of absurd, refined, technicolor transition.”
Dan Armstrong: Macbeth Haiku Variations, Ney-ney Weleba
Stratford primarily based Dan Armstrong is a bassist and composer. He’s carried out as a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony, and Winnipeg Symphony, and is at the moment Principal Bass of the Stratford Symphony Orchestra.
He first studied engineering on the College of British Columbia earlier than making the swap to music. He earned levels from UBC and the Juilliard College.
This system consists of two of his shorter works. A poem by Roy Lewis impressed his Macbeth
Haiku Variations, and the work Ney-ney Weleba was impressed by an Ethio-jazz track by famend Ethiopian singer Alemayehu Eshete.
The Live performance
- The live performance begins at 7 p.m., with a light-weight dinner served at 5:45.
- If you buy your ticket from the hyperlink beneath earlier than 5 p.m. on Might 23, it’ll embrace dinner.
- Tickets bought after 5 p.m. on Might 23 is not going to embrace dinner.
Discover extra particulars [HERE].
Are you trying to promote an occasion? Have a information tip? Have to know the most effective occasions taking place this weekend? Ship us a observe.
#LUDWIGVAN
Get the day by day arts information straight to your inbox.
Join the Ludwig Van Toronto e-Blast! — native classical music and opera information straight to your inbox HERE.
Anya Wassenberg is the Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. Beforehand, she was a contract author with a specialty in tradition and journey for 3 a long time, and a artistic writing teacher for Ontariolearn.