Nathan Schram and Bryant Park Quartet on NPR

NPR listeners were treated to the story of Bryant Park Quartet violist Nathan Schram this past weekend on NPR’s Weekend Edition. The program, which can be found online here,  focuses on Schram’s experience with the joint Carnegie Hall/Juilliard training program, The Academy, from which BPQ violinist Anna Elashvili is also an alumnus. The program aims to develop young musicians with strong entrepreneurial skills and a focus on educational outreach in all contexts.

The Bryant Park Quartet embodies the ideals of The Academy. The group doesn’t just play concerts: Schram says part of its mission is to be music educators.

“It’s been really a spectacular kind of growth of everything I’ve been doing in The Academy,” Schram says. “All the outreach and all the community engagement and all the playing, the chamber music — I’ve really gotten to do [it] on kind of an independent basis with this ensemble.”

We were thrilled to find NPR showcasing this area of music development and certainly feel that the Bryant Park Quartet is blazing new trails in what it might mean to be a modern day performance and educational group.

This broadcast was actually the fourth installment of an ongoing series of reports that NPR has made on the The Academy and Schram in particular, beginning in the winter of 2011.  Previous stories are also posted from January 2011 (“Juilliard, Carnegie Join Together to Teach More Than Music“), February 2011 (“At the Academy, A Young Ensemble Begins“), and June 2011 (“With a Little Help, Violin Students Get to Carnegie Hall“).

Ariel Artists Take On Eliot in “Four Quartets: Variations”

Mark your calendars now!  Major group performances are set for New York City, Cambridge, and Burlington this season as a Ariel Artists unveils its new “Four Quartets: Variations” program for late November and early December.

“Four Quartets: Variations,” revolving around T. S. Eliot’s inimitable sequence Four Quartets, is a theatrical, musical and poetic tour de force. Moored by the performances of four vocalizing actors and four poets interacting with excerpted and remixed text of Eliot’s Four Quartets, the project also features byways into performance sets by Iktus (percussion quartet) and The Guidonian Hand (trombone quartet) which expand the musical reaches and correspondences of the poem. Emphasizing the profundity and structural revelations of Eliot’s book-length text, the actors and musicians surround the poets’ recitations with extended techniques of all varieties, from improbable instrumental sounds to extremes of vocal and improvisatory production, letting the text re-echo in time past, time present, and time future. Fare forward, voyagers.

The performance in Cambridge, Mass., will feature the incredible Bryant Park Quartet in place of Iktus.  Poets will vary with each performance, but overall will include Jon Woodward, Oni Buchanan, R. Dwayne Betts, Thalia Field, Paige Ackerson-Kiely, Major Jackson, Katie Ford, and Cathy Park Hong.

Actors include Marya Lowry, Phil Timberlake, Corianna Moffatt, and Nate Speare.

Poster for the New York City performance of "Four Quartets: Variations"

PERFORMANCE DATES AND DETAILS:

November 28, 2011
Featuring Artists: Bryant Park Quartet, Jon Woodward, Oni Buchanan, R. Dwayne Betts, Thalia Field, Nate Speare, Corianna Moffatt, Phil Timberlake, Marya Lowry, The Guidonian Hand
Where: OBERON
Cambridge, Massachusetts
$15 adv/$20 door ($10 student)

November 30, 2011
Featuring Artists: The Guidonian Hand, Oni Buchanan, Nate Speare, Corianna Moffatt, Phil Timberlake, Marya Lowry, Paige Ackerson-Kiely, Major Jackson, Jon Woodward, Iktus Percussion Quartet
Where: University of Vermont, Davis Center
Burlington, Vermont
free admission

December 2, 2011
Featuring Artists: The Guidonian Hand, Katie Ford, Jon Woodward, Cathy Park Hong, Oni Buchanan, Nate Speare, Corianna Moffatt, Phil Timberlake, Marya Lowry, Iktus Percussion Quartet
Where: The Tank
New York, New York
$15

Four Quartets: Variations

“Four Quartets: Variations,” revolving around T. S. Eliot’s inimitable sequence Four Quartets, is a theatrical, musical and poetic tour de force.  Moored by the performances of four vocalizing actors and four poets interacting with excerpted and remixed text of Eliot’s Four Quartets, the project also features byways into performance sets by the Bryant Park Quartet (string quartet) and The Guidonian Hand (trombone quartet), as well as guest artists Iktus Percussion Quartet, which expand the musical reaches and correspondences of the poem.  Emphasizing the profundity and structural revelations of Eliot’s book-length text, the actors and musicians surround the poets’ recitations with extended techniques of all varieties, from improbable instrumental sounds to extremes of vocal and improvisatory production, letting the text re-echo in time past, time present, and time future.  Fare forward, voyagers.

The quartet of actors are Marya Lowry, Phil Timberlake, Corianna Moffatt, and Nate Speare, while participating poets include Thalia Field, R. Dwayne Betts, Cathy Park Hong, Katie Ford, Major Jackson, Paige Ackerson-Kiely, Jon Woodward, and Oni Buchanan.

Grateful thanks to the following individuals for their support in producing this project:
Sponsors: Colleen Hovey and Chris Bator, Sirkku Kontinnen and Harri Kytömaa
Contributors: Robin Welte and Art Murray, Paula and Jack Barthel, David and Joella Hricik, Tom and Debbie Bross, Greta and Bob Ingraham, Jan Pechenik, Jaqueth Hutchinson

One Last Look at Summer 2011

It’s hard to believe it, but the layer-worthy temperatures outside don’t lie: summer is finally coming to an end.  While we’re eagerly looking forward to a jam-packed fall of events for ourselves, it’s worth another look back at a few more of our artists’ exploits in these recent months.

Guidonian Hand trombonist Sebastian Vera recently returned from a trip to Haiti to lend his talents to the wonderful Jean Baptiste Dessaix Music School (“Ecole de Musique Dessaix-Baptiste”).  It’s a year-round program backed by international supporters that includes a big summer camp element with teachers and volunteers from all over North America teaching students aged 6 to 25.  The program took a hit with the earthquake in 2010, but is bouncing back in incredible ways!

Meanwhile, the Bryant Park Quartet just finished running a week-long summer chamber music camp at Stony Brook University.  The BPQ has helped spearhead the Stony Brook University Community Music Program as its first ever Ensemble-In-Residence, and the summer camp is a major element of the program’s initiative to work with young musicians at Stony Brook and in nearby public schools. They’ll be headed back for a concert at the end of the month (September 25)!

Meanwhile, Stephen Drury spent the summer with two big projects in Boston — the first being Boston University’s Spectral music workshop with composer Joshua Fineberg (Spectral Summer), which included a world premiere of Fineberg’s “Counterfactual.” Second was of course Drury and his Callithumpian Consort’s annual Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice (SICPP), which this year featured composer-in-residence Tristan Murail and a world premiere of John Luther Adams‘s “4000 Holes.”

Outside of a handful of New England performances, Duo Orfeo have been busy preparing material for an electric guitars album, which they’ve just announced they’ll be recording this fall. They promise pieces by Arvo Part, John Cage, Erik Satie and Valentin Silvestrov, and those in attendance at this spring’s “Machines” concerts have already had a taste of some of these sounds.  Needless to say, we can’t wait to hear this record.

And of course, don’t forget the bevy of new talent that joined our ranks this summer: the West Shore Piano Trio, Rhonda Sider Edgington, and janus trio!

May you have a great weekend and check back often for updates as this extremely exciting concert season gets underway…

“Anna Elashvilli, Ben Russell, Adam Meyer, and Tomoko Fujita, are brilliant players of their instruments, as well as serious and exciting musicians. Together they have formed the superb Bryant Park Quartet; they will play wonderfully well and display the highest level of musicianship, in any serious musical circumstance.”

–Joel Krosnick, Juilliard String Quartet

“They are an exciting quartet to hear and watch in performance, projecting warmth and charisma. [...] This is clearly one of the most talented and interesting young string quartets I have heard.”

–Philip Setzer, Emerson String Quartet

“Their abilities as educators are surpassed only by their talent as performers. Their repertoire is varied and interesting, and they tend to frame challenging, popular works around more modern works in a way that is comfortable for all audiences. Their performances are precise and dynamic, but the real treat is their stage presence; an almost conversation-like way of communicating which makes them a joy to watch as well as listen.”

–Michael Hershkowitz, SUNY Stony Brook

“The young musicians who make up the Bryant Park Quartet work hard to charm, entertain and educate young audiences. And they love their work, reaching out to those who are not often exposed to live performances of music by the great composers, hoping to inspire audiences to explore the wide world of wonder to be found by simply listening. The little kids in local schools went exploring last week; who knows what will come of all that they discovered?”

–Marilyn Delk, Darke County Center for the Arts

Bryant Park Quartet Welcomes New Violist

The Bryant Park Quartet welcomes violist Nathan Schram to the ensemble. Schram, a first-prize winner of the 2009 ASTA Solo Competition and a prize-winner at the 2008 Primrose International Viola Competition, succeeds founding violist Adam Meyer, who recently assumed the position of associate dean for administration at The Juilliard School.