PROGRAM

Quartet Number 1 (1929)
2nd Movement: Andante Moderato
Florence Price (1887-1953)

String Quartet in G Minor, Opus 20, Number 3
1st Movement: Allegro con spirito
2nd Movement: Minuetto: Allegretto 
3rd Movement: Poco adagio
4th Movement: Finale: Allegro di molto
 Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

Woman Holding a Balance (2021)
Anna Clyne (b. 1980)

Testimony (2019)
Charlton Singleton (b. 1971)

NOTES

Price – Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, educated at the New England Conservatory of Music, Florence Smith Price was the first African American to have a symphony played by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. A member of the Chicago Black Renaissance, many of her works were never published in her lifetime. A box of her manuscripts was discovered in a dilapidated house in 2009, and her music has been enjoying posthumous fame ever since. 

Haydn - an Austrian composer, has been credited with creating the modern form of chamber music, bringing to it a conversational style where each instrument participates in playing the melodic line. The first movement opens with a jagged leaping figure, is unique in its frequent stops especially in the development section.  The minuet is unusually serious, paired with a beautiful trio section, returns to the original melody and then ends in a mournful key, marked “perdendosi” (dying away).  The third movement opens with a rising hymn-like figure in the first violin, followed by a contrasting line of sixteenth notes in the cello. The fiery finale has Gypsy undertones and features sudden stops like the first movement – it also has a twittering motif, heard in the first violin part, has the last word in the cello’s lowest register.

Clyne – Grammy nominated Clyne is one of the most in-demand composers today, working with orchestras, choreographers, and visual artists around the world. She was the most performed living female British composer in 2022. Originally from England, Ms. Clyne now lives here in the Hudson Valley. Woman Holding a Balance, written in response to a sculpture called Dutch/Light, follows shifting harmonic colors that reaches a melodic section, before returning to the stillness of the opening music.

Singleton – began studying piano in Awendaw SC at the age of three, then went on to study organ, violin, cello, and trumpet; he received a Bachelor of Arts from South Carolina State University. Singleton is Director of the Charleston Jazz Orchestra, and a member of Ranky Tanky which promotes Gullah music from the Southeastern United States. Singleton spoke about his music “Growing up in the church (my father is a retired African Methodist Episcopal Church pastor) I was surrounded by incredible harmony and rhythm. Testimony is written from my prayer Band experience, and rhythms in African American churches – the ‘Gullah Clap’ (on beats two and four) and the ‘Half Clap’ (on beat one only).”

Concert 10-25-23

Haydn 2

patter blue-grey exultation

Métamorphose - Improv

Composer: Kenichi Ikuno Sekiguchi
Performers: Atlys String Quartet

The theme for these variations has an ancient origin: it is the oldest complete composition that has survived to our day. This music was etched on an ancient Greek memorial tablet and was meant to be sung. The text goes as follows:

While you live, shine
have no grief at all
life exists only for a short while
and Time demands his due.

These variations try to evoke a snapshot of different parts of life: happy, melancholic, and exuberant.

Kenichi Ikuno Sekiguchi

Ikuno - Seikilos Variations for String Quartet (2023)

Contemporary electronic jazz with a colourful variety of moods.

Bird Of Paradise

Whither Thou Goest

Japanese-Mexican music composer and arranger. Alumnus of Mannes College, NYC and Royal College of Music, London. Jóvenes Creadores del FONCA 2016/2017.

Ikuno - Seikilos Variations for String Quartet (2023)

Kenichi Ikuno Sekiguchi

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