Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classical: August 2021

Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir has consistently evoked the sounds and vistas of the natural world in her instrumental writing—the fecund valleys and stark coasts of her homeland, in particular—and her first string quartet is no exception. Masterfully performed by Chicago’s Spektral Quartet, this three-movement gem balances astringent abstraction—including unpitched noises and percussive extended techniques—with melancholic grandeur, often voicing those polarities at once. The aptly titled Enigma is fueled by a sense of mystery, translating sounds foreign and familiar to our holistic experiences on Earth in order to deliberately smear the line between the quotidian and the sublime. Sounds from each side of the divide overlap, collide, and inform one another, producing a deliciously ambiguous trip that seems apropos for our fraught times. Despite the emotional uncertainty some passages transmit, spiked as they are with dissonance and brittleness, there’s an abiding humanity at the heart of the music that provides a guiding light.

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NPR Music: Spektral Quartet, 'Enigma: III' (Anna Thorvaldsdottir)

Describing Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir's Enigma – her first string quartet – is not easy, but imagine you're suspended in some primordial gas cloud where matter is transforming, regenerating, building toward the birth of a planet. In the final section of the half-hour piece, long arcs of shifting sound deliver melodies in slow motion, while the composer's extended techniques for the players can make a violin sound like a woodwind or a synthesizer. Percussive creaks and snaps collide with slippery glissandos that flash across the score like tails of cosmic particles in the black nothingness. The performance, by the Spektral Quartet, makes the music feel vast and intimate at once. In an introduction to the score, Thorvaldsdottir dispenses some colorful advice: "When you see a long sustained pitch, think of it as a fragile flower that you need to carry in your hands and walk the distance on a thin rope without dropping it or falling." Good luck.

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Chicago Tribune: Live audiences are (hopefully) coming back. Where does that leave streaming concerts?

In a year all but bereft of upsides, streamed concerts have offered something close to a silver lining. They’ve flung open doors to otherwise inaccessible performances — whether fiscally or physically — and abetted novel performances that might not have happened otherwise, like a freewheeling Pauline Oliveros opera staged over Zoom last April, cellist Seth Parker Woods’s audiovisually mouthwatering performance of a work inspired by The Chicago Defender (and composed by the inimitable Nathalie Joachim), and Spektral Quartet’s lineup of side-splitting, chin-stroking conversation series.

Chicago Reader: Spektral Quartet host an online Q&A with composer Du Yun

Gossip Wolf has long hailed the virtuosic string shredding, herculean productivity, and synergetic programming of Chicago's Spektral Quartet. During the COVID-induced absence of concerts, violinists Clara Lyon and Maeve Feinberg, violist Doyle Armbrust, and cellist Russell Rolen have continued to engage their audience via a series of Zoom Q&A sessions called New Music Help Desk. In keeping with the quartet's collaborative sprit, previous events have included composers Alex Temple, Allison Loggins-Hull, and Chris Fisher-Lochhead, and the next one features Pulitzer-winning Chinese composer Du Yun. It's on Friday, March 5, at 3 PM, and though it's free to attend, you must register at Spektral's website.

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Announcing: The Spektral Quartet Values Statement

Now at the tail end of January, we remain hopeful that this year will be better than the last. 2020 was, well...YIKES. A year with so many kinds of dire circumstances is difficult to comprehend. More personally, for us it is hard to describe the devastation that has been wrought by venue closings, and the prospect that they may remain closed for much longer. So many moments this year have tried to force our hand to conceive of a future that is bleak. Artists push back by dreaming harder.

While we considered our artistic future and rallied behind the programming most essential to carry forward, we knew we also needed to reinvest in ourselves. As curators, good design requires asking good questions, and those questions need to begin at home. Over the span of the last many months we have taken time together to better understand who we are, why we continue to show up for each other, and what it is we have to give.  So today, we'd like to share the Values Statement that we've composed together under the guidance of consultant Jenn Chang, (who was recently sworn in as the White House Liaison to the National Endowment of the Arts and Senior Advisor to NEA Chief of Staff!!)

THESE are our values:

1. We will never impose limitations on our dreams for our artistry.

2. We are rebellious, inventive, and committed to creating memorable and meaningful experiences.

3. We measure our success by the strength of our social impact, the health of our organization, and the depth of our own creative fulfillment.

4. We strive to serve communities long excluded from classical music, and therefore diversity, equity, and inclusion are among the first elements we consider in our decision-making.

5. We affirm that curiosity, not expertise, is the only prerequisite for our events, and all forms of nerdery are celebrated.

6. We treat each piece as its own project and are intentional about our approach, whether it’s a Mozart quartet or a world premiere.

7. We forge long-term, interdependent connections with our audiences and collaborators.

8. We believe that engaging with other disciplines deepens our own musical engagement and purpose and forges new connections among four individual artists in a collaborative practice.

9. We owe much to the generosity of others, so we are liberal in sharing our institutional and artistic knowledge.

10. Chicago’s do-it-yourself spirit is in our ensemble’s DNA.

11. We are four distinct personalities, choosing daily to combine our individual and invaluable abilities to form a dynamic entity.

12. We acknowledge that it is our privilege to at times speak for each other and commit to always do so in a mindful way.

13. We bring our best selves to our work when we are artistically fulfilled and robust in our trust of one another.

14. We are unshakable in our support and advocacy of one another.

As our community, you deserve more than a window into our process, you deserve to understand the beliefs that shape us. These efforts are just the first part of a longer process that will include a thorough examination of our artistic priorities and administrative practices. When we see you in person on the other side, we will meet you with even more intention behind why we do what we do. Further, in putting this statement out into the world, we invite you to help us hold ourselves accountable.

We're proud of these values, and hope you will be too.

Clara (on behalf of The Spektrals)

Comfort Hive: Experiments in Living - A Conversation with Russell Rolen of Spektral Quartet

Cover art by: Alanna Zaritz

Stephen Anthony Rawson: You’ve partnered with a number of Chicago-based organizations—the MCA, GirlForward, the Rebuild Foundation,
the Mosaic School, Openlands Lakeshore Preserve—as well as many composers and performers from this area, and, in 2017, Spektral Quartet was named Chicagoans of the Year. What do you see as your responsibility to Chicagoans?

Russ Rolen: I think it’s just being a good citizen. Our responsibility as artists is to be good “citizen artists.” And a “citizen” is different from a “resident.” A “citizen” is someone who participates in the life of the city; someone who is adding to it as they can. It also means being that city’s champion in a way. When we’re in Chicago, we want to be involved in many different artistic conversations that are happening. We want to be making friends all over the city. We want to be adding to it and doing our part in the ways that artists can. And when we go out of the city, we feel like it’s important to bring art from Chicago to other places so that the art that’s being created here is not siloed here. It’s using the platform that we have as an opportunity to share what’s happening where we come from.

Read the entire interview here

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All proceeds from this issue of Comfort Hive will benefit the Greater Chicago Food Depository. Grab a copy!

Chicago Tribune: How are small Chicago arts groups doing? New survey suggests Zoom is here to stay

The Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley Foundation funds many Chicago theaters, dance companies, music groups and other mostly small arts organizations. In recent weeks, the foundation has conducted a comprehensive survey of its grantees, asking a variety of questions as to how they were coping with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The results, shared this week with the Tribune, offer a fascinating snapshot of a more difficult cultural life in a changed city.

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“We have gone farther this year than ever before when it comes to bringing our loyal fan base into the fold, so to speak, because we have noticed how fulfilling it is on both sides to continue building a sense of unity and teamwork in spite of our physical isolation,” wrote the Chicago music group known as Spektral Quartet, echoing similar responses from theater and dance companies.

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