Concert

Anna Einarsson: Courage, mon amie (2021)

Einarson’s  string quartet is influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic and personal trials coincided with the creative process..Expressions of melancholy or grief on social media are often met with cheerful exclamations and cute emojis which, although meant as genuine expressions of support and encouragement, can easily be perceived as empty and detached. However, the sober exhortation "courage, mon amie" – take courage, my friend – from Einarsson's French-speaking friend became a beacon that, in Einarsson's own words, "broke through the darkness and showed the way forward." 

Karl-Erik Wellin: Residuo (1974)

String Quartet No.4 Residuo from 1974 was composed at Welin’s summer house on Mallorca. After a long struggle with alcohol abuse, Welin woke up one morning and realized that it was enough. Writing the string quartet became a path back to life, and the title Residuo
symbolizes the return.

Tanya Tagaq: Sivunittinni (2015)

Among many of her talents, Tanya Tagaq is an Inuit throat singer.  Her composition Sivunittinni (in arrangement for string quartet by Jacob Garchik) closely connects to this tradition. Tagaq writes: “Sivunittinni, or ‘the future ones,’ comes from a part of a poem I wrote for my album, and is the perfect title for this piece. My hope is to bring a little bit of the land to future musicians through this piece. There’s a disconnect in the human condition, a disconnect from nature, and it has caused a great deal of social anxiety and fear, as well as a lack of true meaning of health, and a lack of a relationship with what life is, so maybe this piece can be a little bit of a wake-up.”

Chris Derksen: White Man’s Cattle (2018)

David Perlman writes in the Whole Note about the piece:  “White Man’s Cattle evokes the collision of cultures in Alberta’s history, via an interpolated, scratchy soundclip of an early 20th-century Alberta farmer, master of all he surveys, speaking about “his land.” It’s a layered, driving work, demanding of every ounce of the Eyblers’ astonishing bowmanship. “The hoofprints of cattle and bison in the dust are not so different,” Derksen says laconically.”

Caroline Shaw: Entr’acte (2011)

Shaw writes: ”Entr’acte was written in 2011 after hearing the Brentano Quartet play Haydn’s op. 77 No. 2 — with their spare and soulful shift to the D-flat major trio in the minuet. It is structured like a minuet and trio, riffing on that classical form but taking it a little further. I love the way some music (like the minuets of op. 77) suddenly takes you to the other side of Alice’s looking glass, in a kind of absurd, subtle, technicolor transition.”