Spektral Summer Reading List 2016: Part I

Spektral Summer Reading List 2016: Part I

We asked our musician friends and fellow creatives for their BEST recommendations for summer reading, and WOWZERS did they deliver! Wondering what the 1st violinist of the Guarneri Quartet, director of the Pitchfork Festival, and New Yorker Magazine classical critic think you should bring to the beach? Dig in, and call your local bookstore to have them ready the forklift!

Arnold Steinhardt (Guarneri Quartet 1st violinist)
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
"I just finished reading My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. It is part of her or his Neapolitan Novels, a series of books that tracks the friendship of two girls through their lives. I said his or her because nobody knows who Elena Ferrante really is. The story takes place in Naples, Italy in the 1950’s. Warning: the dazzling writing and the heart stopping action is addicting. I’ve just started the second novel, The Story of a New Name."

Mike Reed (Drummer, Composer, Pitchfork Festival Founding Director)
Spinning Blues Into Gold: The Chess Brothers and the Legendary Chess Records by Nadine Cohodas
"I’m hoping to finish the book Spinning Blues Into Gold: The Chess Brothers and the Legendary Chess Records. I’m always trying to find the deeper histories of Chicago and it’s translation into the music communities that were created here. Since the city is one built on segregation it also helps to show the connectivity that people don’t see or have forgotten."

Announcing our violinist transition for the 2016/17 Season

Dear friends,

Today we announce important news, and we want you to be among the first to know. Austin Wulliman, a founding member of our ensemble and our violinist for the past six years, is leaving Chicago to pursue a career in contemporary music as a new member of the JACK Quartet.

While the departure of a member is complex, we're embracing this moment as an opportunity to grow as an ensemble, and we look toward the future with enthusiasm. We will continue to produce and perform programs that create vibrant and inviting conversation between the music of today and the beloved repertoire of the past, in a concert style that is intimate and personal. We are tremendously excited about our current candidates for the position and the accomplishments, versatility, and love of chamber music they embody. We wish Austin much happiness and the best of luck in his new pursuit, and look forward to introducing you to our newest member soon.

Austin would like to add:

"When we first started, I never could have predicted everything we've done together since founding Spektral Quartet. From the musical conversation between commissions and the standard quartet literature, to building our community in Chicago, as well as our teaching at the University of Chicago and beyond, I'm proud to have been a part of it. While my musical adventure takes me to a new city with a dedicated focus on new music, I eagerly await hearing and seeing the innovative and richly varied programs Spektral presents next."

Austin will continue performing with us during the transition, and there won't be any interruption to our scheduled concerts for the 2016/17 season.

All the best,
The Spektrals

"Projects as games": An interview with composer Tomás Gueglio-Saccone

"Projects as games": An interview with composer Tomás Gueglio-Saccone

If you've been to Spektral concert, you've no doubt bumped in to composer Tomás Gueglio-Saccone (you should really watch where you're going, Bumpy McStumbleton). Tomás has been a friend and advocate since the earliest days of the quartet, and we are happy to be gently funneling his Decals II into your ears on June 12th. Tomás has a few things to say on the subject of said funneling:

"Hiking through a dense and changing forest": An interview with composer Mikel Kuehn

"Hiking through a dense and changing forest": An interview with composer Mikel Kuehn

We've got Mikel Kuehn's String Quartet No. 1 "If on a winter's night..." on the bill for YACHT ROCK and we can't wait to get this alluring work back on stage after premiering it in May. Rather than the typical apply for grant –> receive piece from composer –> perform piece dynamic, we were lucky to workshop with Mikel throughout the development of the piece...and become friends in the process.

Strad Magazine: The Spektral’s exploration of musical humour is no laughing matter

Strad Magazine: The Spektral’s exploration of musical humour is no laughing matter

Serious Business, the Chicago-based Spektral Quartet knowingly calls its collection of four pieces exploring humour in music. And there’s no question of the foursome taking any of this music lightly: these are superb performances, vivid and strongly felt, convincingly argued and full of rich, characterful detail.

Gramophone: 'Serious Business'

Gramophone: 'Serious Business'

‘This album is not funny,’ writes Spektral Quartet viola player Doyle Armbrust in his booklet-note about the quartet’s very not-funny new release of music by Sky Maeklay, David Reminick and Chris Fisher-Lochhead, with Haydn plopped down surreally in their midst. The resulting geeky, highly interactive, creative and collaborative fun and games drenched in pop culture are, as advertised, unlike anything its intended audience - or anyone else - has ever heard.

Strad Magazine: Review - Spektral Quartet - SubCulture

Strad Magazine: Review - Spektral Quartet - SubCulture

Humour in music can be in short supply but the Spektral Quartet did its best to remedy that in an upbeat evening celebrating its recent CD release. Cellist Russell Rolen introduced Sky Macklay’s Many Many Cadences: (2014), grinningly referring to it as ‘sadistic’. Macklay’s dazzling exercise sounds as if she collected the endings to dozens of works and then grafted them together in a series of descending scales. If it is sadistic for the musicians, it is sheer pleasure for listeners, especially with the Spektral players’ ear-tickling precision.

Washington Post: No quarter from the Spektral Quartet

Washington Post: No quarter from the Spektral Quartet

That the quartet (joined at times by flutist Claire Chase) handled all the slithering, dodging, sputtering and explosiveness thrown its way with such aplomb was impressive. They are a marvelous foursome, and made most of the hurdles in their path sound easily surmountable — sometimes even fun.

Boston Globe: Spektral Quartet at Goethe-Institut, finding music in shards

Boston Globe: Spektral Quartet at Goethe-Institut, finding music in shards

"Things have already fallen apart at the outset of Beat Furrer’s String Quartet No. 3; the center has given way to a marginal babel: scrapes, scratches, plucks. On Sunday at the Goethe-Institut, the superb Chicago-based Spektral Quartet, making its Boston debut, took on Furrer’s challenge of reassembling such halting signals into coherence — while still, in its playing and programming, drawing out the equivocality of Furrer’s undertaking: striving toward communication, uncertain of the possibility."

New York Classical Review: Spektral Quartet explores the invigorating quiet of noise

New York Classical Review: Spektral Quartet explores the invigorating quiet of noise

"Friday night at Bargemusic, Chicago’s Spektral Quartet delivered an invigorating and involving reminder of just how broad and deep the range of contemporary classical music is, via outstanding playing of equally outstanding new and recent works from Hans Thomalla and Beat Furrer."

The Boston Globe: For Spektral Quartet, modern music mixes well with humor

The Boston Globe: For Spektral Quartet, modern music mixes well with humor

"The front cover of “Serious Business,” the Spektral Quartet’s new album, shows three members — violinists Austin Wulliman and Clara Lyon, and cellist Russell Rolen — walking toward the camera, earnest looks on their faces, while the fourth, violist Doyle Armbrust, is falling helplessly on his behind. On the back cover, Armbrust is seen writhing in pain while the other three are shown in poses of desolation and mourning — for his viola.

It’s the perfect advertisement for an album whose works incorporate humor, in wildly disparate ways, into the often severe matter of contemporary music. The photos also say something important about Spektral’s talented and ambitious musicians: serious about the music, not about themselves."

New York Times: Frequency Festival in Chicago Offers the Complicated and Compelling

"...All were formidable, none more so than the Spektral Quartet’s free Sunday afternoon show at Fullerton Hall at the Art Institute of Chicago. The foursome of Austin Wulliman, Clara Lyon, Doyle Armbrust and Russell Rolen focuses on new music, but isn’t beholden to it. Their latest, chirpy release on the Sono Luminus label, “Serious Business,” quizzically looks at musical humor through three works from the last two years, and a fourth by an up-and-comer named Franz Josef Haydn.

Straiter laces prevailed here for an engrossing program, “Prismatic Memory.” The quartet proved that they have everything: a supreme technical command that seems to come easily; a capacity to make complicated music clear; and, most notably on this occasion, an ability to cast a magic spell of silence over a restless, gallery-going audience.

The first potion was the premiere of “Bagatellen” (2015) by Hans Thomalla, who teaches at Northwestern University. In the third of nine tight, hushed miniatures, a trill was stretched out, slowly obliterated; in the fourth, a chorale became immobile, yet still comprehensible; the last was a brushing arioso, bowed on the instruments’ bodies, necks and tuning pegs.

The players brought a similarly un-self-conscious approach to the extended techniques in Beat Furrer’s String Quartet No. 3 (2004), an enveloping, bona fide masterpiece that stretches over 50 uninterrupted minutes. For some reason, the reputation of the Swiss-born Mr. Furrer has not properly crossed the Atlantic. It should..."

Read the whole article here

Explore "HACK" with new interactive video player

Composer Chris Fisher-Lochhead's Hack for string quartet takes its inspiration and musical materials from an unlikely source: the vocal stylings of stand-up comedians. Chris carefully transcribed the pitch, rhythm, and cadence of 16 great comics of the past and present, and composed a piece of music with a completely unique harmonic world and sense of flow .  

We've created this custom video player so that you can explore Chris's ingenious musical character study with two classic bits from Dave Chappelle and Sarah Silverman. 

Hit play and then move the slider to crossfade between the original audio and the quartet music. (Note: this player works best on a desktop browser, and does not work at all on iOS.) 

For a more in-depth look into the process of creating Hack, see Chris's 6-part blog series at Hack UnPacked

Hack is featured on our new album Serious Business, now available on the Sono Luminus record label. Find it on Amazon, iTunes, and Google Play

Second Inversion: ALBUM REVIEW: Spektral Quartet’s “Serious Business”

Second Inversion: ALBUM REVIEW: Spektral Quartet’s “Serious Business”

In Medieval times musicians were essentially court jesters—entertainers who performed music, told jokes, and did tricks to entertain the nobility or to make money at fairs and markets. But somewhere along the long and winding road of the Western music tradition, music became much more serious.

Fast forward to the 21st century, where opera houses and concert halls protect and preserve a canon of “serious” classical works. Audience members dress in suits and gowns, sit quietly in their seats, read expertly-crafted program notes, stick their noses in the air and, most importantly, never clap between movements.

Or at least, that’s how it feels sometimes. But the Spektral Quartet is here to dispel that classical concert-going stereotype and inject a little much-needed comic relief into the classical music realm.

Spektral’s new album, titled “Serious Business,” is anything but serious. The album comprises four different perspectives on humor through the lens of classical music, featuring three new works by living composers and one classic from that late, great father of the string quartet, Joseph Haydn.

Cart (0)