Kronos+

The Kronos Quartet played Mazzoleni Hall last night along with the three young string quartets they have been working with this week.  First up was the Dior Quartet (Noa Sarid, Tobias Elser, Caleb Georges and Joanne Yesoi Choi); the Glenn Gould School’s Quartet in Residence, with Soon Yeon Lyuh’s Yessori.  They were followed by the Taylor Academy Quartet (Nicholas Vasdilakoupolos-Kostopoulos, Ophit Strumpf, Angelina Sievers and Ethan Jeon) with Yotam Haber’s rather meditative From the Book.  The Glenn Gould School Quartet  (Tiffasny Tsai, Tiffany Yeung, Tristan Macaggi and Shun-Nin Yand) closed out the student part of the evening with Aleksandra Vrebalov’s semi-improvisatory My Desert, My Rose.  The standard of playing by all three groups was really high.

UK- Roskilde Festival in Denmark

Kronos Quartet perform at the Roskilde Festival.

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Torus; chamber music by Yotam Haber

torusYotam Haber’s album Torus is a bit off the beaten track for me but there’s some art song on it (for some value of art song) and it has Mireille Asselin singing on one track so I thought I’d check it out.  There are five pieces, written between 2007 and 2014, on the album.  The first two are vocal numbers.  We were all is a setting (for some value of setting) of Cherries by Andrea Cohen.  It’s unlike conventional art song in that fragments of text are broken up, repeated and interwoven in driving repetitive pattern something like some of Steve Reich’s music.  The other vocal piece is rather different.  On Leaving Brooklyn is a setting of Julia Kasdorf’s After Psalm 137.  It has a declamatory vocal line set over a sort of minimalist accompaniment.  This is the one with Mireille singing.

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