The Calder Quartet – lately of Los Angeles (by way of LA, NYC, and Berlin) – is doing a residency in Portland which will culminate in their performances for Portland Friends of Chamber Music on Monday, March 14th and Tuesday, March 15th (7:30 p.m. both nights) at Portland State University’s Lincoln Performance Hall.
The residency begins with a free concert in the Collins Gallery at the Multnomah County Central Library on Saturday, March 12th from 2:00 – 3:00 p.m. Space will be limited, so it would be advisable to show up early to get a seat.
Next, the quartet will be “quartet in residence for a day” at the Portland Art Museum. They will perform several works in different gallery spaces throughout the museum on Sunday, March 13th between 3:00 – 4:30 p.m.
Finally, there will be an open rehearsal at Lincoln Performance Hall at Portland State University, from 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. on Monday, March 14th. It is free and open to the public.
The two concerts (tickets available online here) illustrate the Calders’ dedication both to established canonical repertoire and to exploring works both new and less familiar to many listeners.
Most interestingly, the first concert has at its center the Quartet No. 3 “There must be some way out of here” by the Dutch composer Jacob ter Veldhuis, a.k.a. JacobTV. Veldhuis started as a rock musician, but soon became interested in (and studied) composition and electronic music. He’s most well-known for he dislike for the modernist compositional soundscape, and favors melodious music with little in the way of dissonance. He is quote as saying “I pepper my music with sugar”.
On the second concert, which features one of my favorite quartets – the Quartet No. 2 “Intimate Letters” by Janacek – has another newer composition, this time by the British composer Fred Frith (also, like Veldhuis, a rocker turned composer) – his String Quartet No. 1 “Lelekovice”, Op. 20. Frith cut his teeth with such New York composers as John Zorn, Ikue Mori, and Bruce Ostertag. He now teaches composition at Mills College in Oakland, California.
They should be fascinating and enjoyable concerts – I heartily encourage you to attend!
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[…] The Los Angeles-based Calder Quartet is arriving this weekend to do a mini-residency in Portland before their Friends of Chamber Music performances on Monday and Tuesday of next week. I’ve been doing a bit of research on them for their upcoming concerts, and you can find that info here. […]