On March 23rd, 2019, we curated The Modern Salon: South Side Edition at the Stony Island Arts Bank. More importantly, we were just one element within of a night of inspiring and provocative art-making alongside creatives from across Chicago.
It was all just so damn REAL. The performers and the audience talked perception, and blind spots, and rigor, and race, and Chicago.
So, as it turns out, it’s WAY fun to have our audiences making art right alongside us! We hit the jackpot by partnering with the Chicago Mosaic School for our most recent Close Encounters event – titled Facets of Earth & Sound – and if the participant response was any indication, this was one of the most inspiring and entertaining Chicago-area classical music events of the year.
On November 3rd, we met over fifty music fans at 6:30am (!!!) at the Berger Park Cultural Center to usher in the sunrise together.
We lucked out with idyllic weather, and the crowd was open-eared and surprisingly bright-eyed given the hour. We began with a group vocal meditation, led by our friend Charmaine Lee, performed two movements of the Ravel quartet, and then shifted into an improvisation to greet the rising sun.
Our 2018/19 season launched with the world premiere of Tonia Ko’s Plain, Air, commissioned by Chamber Music America and presented in partnership with Chicago conservation organization Openlands…and it was easily one of the most enlivening events we’ve ever attempted.
We have a brand-new record with saxophonist Miguel Zenón – Yo Soy La Tradición – dropping on September 21st, but this album release show is actually a benefit for the Puerto Rican victims of Hurricane Maria... a chance to celebrate new music and help out our fellow citizens!
With the date fast approaching, memories of our rehearsals and recording session have resurfaced. We'll delve into Miguel's experience with the fallout from the hurricane – which hit just days before we started working together – but today we'd like to share the rehearsal photos taken by our friend and supporter, Bob Watson.
We had an incredible time presenting our fifth annual Chamber Music Intensive in partnership with the University of Chicago Department of Music and the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, with support from the Associated Chamber Music Players. This year we had an absolutely lovely collection of participants, our second go-around teaching alongside pianist Daniel Pesca, and had the great good fortune of inviting violin pedagogue Lucy Chapman as our guest artist. And that's only the half of it...
(photos by interns Doyle Armbrust and Maeve Feinberg)
This weekend, we recorded a new album with one of our jazz heroes, Miguel Zenón. Yo Soy La Tradición is a concert-length work inspired by the folk traditions of Miguel's native Puerto Rico, and it's a piece we've fallen head-over-heels for. We think you're really going to love this album when it drops in early 2018.
Because of the timing, we spent a good amount of our hang talking about the hurricane damage in Puerto Rico, which is heartbreaking. We hope you'll consider joining us in contributing to the relief effort. Here is one organization that may not yet be on your radar.
Also, we clearly can't be trusted to be around all this gear (see below)...
We are still abuzz from the launch of our new DOVETAIL SERIES with vocalist Maggie Brown and composer/keyboardist Calvin Brunson! Our goal was to create a musical exchange–one in which we are learning as much as we are presenting–and we couldn't have asked for a more enthusiastic crowd, or beautiful space.
Fortunately, we have talented friends, and photographer Marc Perlish was on hand to capture the evening. Marc is one of those artists that is just as skillful in a live setting as one in which he has control over the elements, and in this case, he transformed a particularly dusky lighting situation into these bright, energetic photos you see below.
We have three DOVETAIL shows coming up this season, so keep an eye out for details. This project has us all fired up, and we can't wait to tell you who we're collaborating with this year!
This July, we presented our third-annual Chamber Music Intensive in partnership with the University of Chicago's Department of Music and the Logan Center for the Arts–and it feels like we're seriously hitting our stride. The four-day festival is geared toward college-age and amateur string players and pianists, and this year our theme was The Romantics. Amidst all the Brahms and Borodin and Dvořák, we were treated to masterclasses and an on-stage interview with Guarneri Quartet first violinist Arnold Steinhardt, a dynamic presentation on the music-centric literature of the era from Beyond the Score founder Gerard McBurney, a field trip to hear the Grant Park Symphony...and an epic rainstorm for the ages.
We can't wait for next year, and if you have photos you'd like to contribute to the CMI gallery below, shoot them over to doyle@spektralquartet.com. See you next summer!
We've had an incredible season–Grammys, Feldman, Rome, et al–and we thought we'd pull some photos off our glowing rectangles to share with you.
For 2017/18, we're launching the ONCE MORE–WITH FEELING! series at Constellation, and we need your support to make it happen. For it, we'll fly in a composer, perform a piece from their catalog at least twice, and in the middle discuss what inspired its creation, and how it works. This series was born out of feedback from our audiences–that if only they could hear a new piece more than once, they'd be able to digest and appreciate it more–and this new series is our answer. We are seeking to raise $3,000 by the end of this week in order to fly Wadada Leo Smith, Eliza Brown, Lisa Coons, and LJ White to town next season. Thank you so much for considering a donation to get this project launched!
