Quartet (2007)
sound installation
continuous

documentation: MP3 format

The string quartet: a conversation between four players.

Each player performs using material from a different movement of Beethoven's op. 59 no. 3 string quartet ("Rasumovsky 3"). Because each movement has a different character, each player has their own "personality".

The conversation is unscripted and spontaneous, created between the players and evolving in a unique way with each performance. The players listen to one another: initiating dialogue, offering responses, providing accompaniment. Occasionally one will deliver a soliloquy (or in musical terms, play a cadenza).

A conversation among the parts of the Rasumovsky; a dialogue between composition and improvisation; a conversation with the history of the string quartet.

Special thanks to the Fry Street Quartet for the use of their recording of the Beethoven.

Installations:
2008.01.13: Mondavi Center for the Arts, Davis, California
2007.04.20-21: Kenilworth Open House, Milwaukee, Wisconsin


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