August 13 & 14, 2020
Live-Streamed from Mighty Fine Productions - Please head to our YouTube or Facebook to join the live-stream.
8:00pm MDT shows
free
Playground Ensemble introduces its 2020-21 concert season, titled "Lost and Found", with four unique works for string quartet. Conceived in the physically-distant culture of COVID-19, the program will be live-streamed in two installments over the course of two evenings in collaboration with Mighty Fine Productions.
The first installment (August 13) explores that which has been “lost”. The second installment (August 14) considers things “found”.
In lieu of ticket donations, The Playground will be accepting donations both nights for the "Justice for Raverro" campaign. 100% of donations collected will go directly to this cause. Donate here, and under special instructions write “Justice for Raverro”. For more information about the cause you can visit www.justiceforraverro.com and the From Allies to Abolitionists facebook page.
THE PROGRAM - Thursday, August 13
Featuring:
Sarah Whitnah, Violin
Robyn Julyan, Violin
Lauren Spaulding, Viola
Jake Saunders, Cello
Erasure – Gemma Peacocke (1984-)
“If women are invisible, then it doesn’t really matter how important they are, because in the public consciousness they don’t exist.” — Dr Amanda Foreman, Historian
“I wrote Erasure back in 2017. I had been reading about how in many cultures around the world it’s still taboo for a woman’s name to be known beyond her immediate family members. So when she dies, her name goes with her...and it made me think about all the women whose names have been completely erased from our collective history: all of the artists and architects and scientists and thinkers; composers; and also the ordinary women whose names we can just never know. So when I was thinking about writing the piece, I thought about all of the elements that make up a piece of music and how I could gradually erase those elements from the piece. So you’ll hear different energies and textures and rhythms build up and then dissipate. That was my way of figuring out how to erase something that’s so vital.” — Gemma Peacocke, July 2020
String Quartet No. 3 “Leaves of an unwritten diary” – Krzysztof Penderecki (1933-2020)
Penderecki’s String Quartet No. 3 was written for the Shanghai Quartet, and received its premiere at the Krzysztof Penderecki Festival in Warsaw on November 21, 2008.
The voice of the violin was a familiar instrument for Penderecki: “When I was twelve, my father bought a good instrument for me from a Soviet soldier for a bottle of raw spirits,” he recalls in an interview. And he adds that he wrote his first violin pieces for his own pleasure, at eleven or twelve. The composer’s prominent connection to string instruments contributed to a very natural style of quartet writing.
Two string quartets already occupy a significant place in the composer’s compositions. His first (1960) paces a musical language for Polish sonorism, a trademark of the Polish school of composing which highlights tone and color. The Second Quartet (1968) was composed after Penderecki’s St. Luke Passion, which strayed from the avant‐garde which he had defined in host composition style.
The Third Quartet is sonorous and dark, full of melodies that have been purified of the excessive writing language of Penderecki’s youth. The thin delicate lines of the quartet are constructed similarly to a Baroque Concerto grosso, lending the music to sway between his use of Vivaces and reflective Nocturnes. The singing and nocturne‐like tones have become a trademark of Penderecki’s “sound language” in his later years – and the same is true of recurring motives structured around static tonal centers. Penderecki leaves the audience with clear boundaries of beginning and end throughout the work and plays with the chaos of intense emotion and structure.
In a conversation with students of the Academy of Music in Kraków, the composer confessed: “My entire life is to surprise, seek and find myself in a thicket.” With Penderecki’s recent passing, Playground Ensemble invites you to find yourself in the music of this lost composer’s thicket of sounds.
THE PROGRAM - Friday, August 14
Featuring:
Sarah Whitnah, Violin
Robyn Julyan, Violin
Lauren Spaulding, Viola
Jake Saunders, Cello
String Quartet No. 2 “Four Thoughts on Marvin Gaye” – Don Byron (1958-)
"In the last few years, I have gained confidence, inspiration, and spiritual grounding in gospel culture. Black religious music is the elephant in the room when any serious discussion of serious music takes place. So much of the great music of the sixties and seventies was made by vocalists with gospel roots. While Aretha and Ray Charles are the obvious giants, Marvin Gaye is right there with them. His was a subtle art. His melismatic improvisations seemed to happen almost in slow motion. He was seldom flashy, always sexy. I saw him several times, the final time in Boston. He flashed the audience several times and when he'd howl like a wolf, the women in the audience would scream on cue. A careful examination of his line reveals a complicated blues structure, full of bends and tears; a Sinatra-like smoothness; and a consistently dirty mind. His personal life was troubled, particularly his relationship with his father, who ended up killing him. What a story! I think he's a great subject for a string quartet, if not a mini-series." – Don Byron, 2006 (ETHEL string quartet album Light, produced by Cantaloupe Music)
Quijotadas – Gabriela Lena Frank (1972-)
“Quijotadas (2007) for string quartet is inspired by El Ingenioso Hidalgo don Quijote de La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616). Widely considered the first modern novel, this tale satirizes post-Conquest Spain by relating the tale of a middle-aged lesser nobleman who undertakes absurd adventures in pursuit of romantic - and seriously outdated - knightly ideals. Cervantes’ brilliant and colorful resulting social commentary still reverberates for us today in the arts and popular culture at large. Quijotadas, which is the Spanish word for extravagant delusions wrought in the Quixotic spirit, is in five movements. They are:
Alborada: Traditionally a Spanish song of welcome or beginnings, this is in the style of music for the chifro, a small high-pitched wooden panpipe played with one hand. It is often employed by a traveling guild worker to announce is services as he walks through the streets of town.
Seguidilla: This free interpretation of the spirited dance rhythms of Don Quijote’s homeland of La Mancha also evokes two typical instruments - The six-stringed guitar, and its older cousin, the bandurria, which finds its origin in Renaissance Spain.
Moto Perpetua: La Locura de Quijote: This movement is inspired by an early chapter in the novel that describes Don Quijote sequestering himself in his hacienda, reading nothing but novels of chivalry, the pulp fiction of his time. The teasing promises of grandeur make him dizzy and he eventually goes mad.
Asturianada: La Cueva: The style of this traditional mountain song (whereby a young male singer issues forth calls that rise and fall with great emotion and strength) is used to paint a portrait of the Cave of the Montesinos. In an important episode of the novel, Don Quijote fantasizes about the legendary hero Montecinos trapped under enchantment in a highland cave.
Las Danza de Los Arrieros: Throughout the tale, Don Quijote is constantly rubbing up against arrieros (muleteers) who, for Cervantes, are the embodiment of reality in contrast to Don Quijote’s fantasy world. The encounters with these roughnecks are always abrupt and physical, usually resulting in a sound thrashing for Quijote. Each bearing brings him closer to reality, and in the end, he must poignantly reconcile himself to the fact that his noble ideals do find hospitable home in the contemporary world.” - Gabiela Lena Frank