The INNERchamber String Quartet joins with double bassists Ian Whitman and Dan Armstrong for their next concert, titled Dark With Excessive Bright. The concert takes place May 25 at Factory 163 in Stratford, Ontario, and adds a finale to their 15th concert season.
The INNERchamber String Quartet is Andrew Chung (violin), Allene Chomyn (violin), Judith Davenport (viola), and Ben Bolt-Martin (cello). Their goal is to expand on the typical concert hall experience for audiences. Their concerts offer both in-person and video on demand access, and delicious meals available to go along with the music.
The Music
The program explores various themes.
- Missy Mazzoli (b. 1980) Dark With Excessive Bright
- Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942) String Quartet No. 2
- Caroline Shaw (b. 1982) Entr’acte
- Dan Armstrong (b. 1953) Macbeth Haiku Variations, Ney-ney Weleba
“It is rare, and at the same time a great luxury, to have two double basses on one program! When Ian Whitman (bassist) approached me about performing this stunning work by Missy Mazzoli, titled Dark With Excessive Bright, I was excited to take it on because of the bass soloist aspect of the piece, within a piece of chamber music. From there we added a number of pieces that also have great impact for the listener, but also exhibit a great deal of contrast and dynamic range. Pieces by Caroline Shaw, and then by Dan Armstrong (the other bassist on the program) are both impactful and fun. I love the work of Erwin Schulhoff, and I am glad that we are performing his wild String Quartet No. 2 for the first time.
“This is a terrific way to cap off our 15th season, one I am very proud of for its breadth of music, performed at a very high level. Every concert this season has sold out for tickets, and this speaks to the eagerness and willingness of our wonderful audience to allow their curiosity and imagination to soar as we explore music together,” says Artistic Director Andrew Chung in a statement.
Dadaism and Music
Dadaism is a movement that’s most often associated with visual or literary arts, however, it had an impact on the music world as well. At its core, Dadaism is about rejected the traditional and embracing not only change, but change that may push the envelope towards the absurd and nonsensical, anti-bourgeois and anti-art expressions.
Common elements of Dadaist music include noise, street sounds, and unconventional instrumentation.
The movement gained popularity in the WWI era, around 1915, as a critique of the so-called logic and reason that govern capitalism and warfare.
Erwin Schulhoff: String Quartet No. 2
Austro-Czech composer and pianist Erwin Schulhoff was, like Kafka and Mahler, a German Jew. He was one of the earliest composers of art music to inject the lively edge of jazz into his work, and Dadaism was just one of the modes he used in his music.
His life story is marked by the wars. His father, a wool and cotton merchant, lost his fortune in the inflationary times of the 1920s, and later, during WWII, Erwin was deported to a concentration camp, where he died in 1942 at the age of 48.
Schulhoff was a prodigy whose talent was apparent at the early age of three. His mother consulted Dvořák, who notoriously disliked child prodigies. After testing his ability to recognize pitch and harmony, the composer gave Erwin a couple of chocolates, and recommended piano studies at the Prague Conservatory. Schulhoff studied in Prague, and later in Vienna, Leipzig and Cologne.
He became pen friends with Alban Berg and Schoenberg, but was attracted to the Dada movement in Dresden during the period between the wars. His music presents a light, even silly mood that casts a skeptical and critical eye on the world that was unfolding around him. His second string quartet was written in 1925.
Missy Mazzoli: Dark With Excessive Bright
Mazzoli’s piece is one of the few works to put the double bass into the spotlight as a solo instrument. Her piece reveals the instruments tonal and colour range. In the composition notes, Mazzioli writes,
“‘Dark with excessive bright,’ a phrase from Milton’s Paradise Lost, is a surreal and evocative description of God, written by a blind man. I love the impossibility of this phrase, and felt it was a strangely accurate way to describe the dark but heartrending sound of the double bass itself.”
The work recalls and repurposes string techniques from across the centuries, based on patterns of modified, repeated chords. It was commissioned by the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Aurora Orchestra in London, and first performed in 2018.
Ian Whitman performs as the soloist.
Caroline Shaw: Entr’acte
American composer Caroline Shaw is the recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Music, several GRAMMY awards, and other accolades. In her notes, she writes,
“Entr’acte was written in 2011 after I heard the Brentano Quartet play Haydn’s Op. 77, No. 2 — with their spare and soulful shift to the D-flat major trio in the minuet. It is structured like a minuet and trio, riffing on that classical form but taking it a little further. I love the way some music (like the minuets of Op. 77) suddenly takes you to the other side of Alice’s looking glass, in a kind of absurd, subtle, technicolor transition.”
Dan Armstrong: Macbeth Haiku Variations, Ney-ney Weleba
Stratford based Dan Armstrong is a bassist and composer. He’s performed as a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony, and Winnipeg Symphony, and is currently Principal Bass of the Stratford Symphony Orchestra.
He first studied engineering at the University of British Columbia before making the switch to music. He earned degrees from UBC and the Juilliard School.
The program includes two of his shorter works. A poem by Roy Lewis inspired his Macbeth
Haiku Variations, and the work Ney-ney Weleba was inspired by an Ethio-jazz song by renowned Ethiopian singer Alemayehu Eshete.
The Concert
- The concert begins at 7 p.m., with a light dinner served at 5:45.
- If you purchase your ticket from the link below before 5 p.m. on May 23, it will include dinner.
- Tickets purchased after 5 p.m. on May 23 will not include dinner.