Jasper String Quartet Performs The Music of Vivian Fung at Americas Society/Council Of The Americas

The Jasper String Quartet will perform the music of JUNO Award-winning composer Vivian Fung on Monday, October 16, 2023 at 7pm, presented by the Americas Society/Council of the Americas (680 Park Avenue). Admission is free, but registration is required. The concert celebrates the release of Insects and Machines, the Jasper's new album featuring Fung's String Quartets Nos. 1-4. The concert program interweaves selections from Vivian Fung's String Quartets Nos. 1, 2, and 4 with selections from Alfred Schnittke's String Quartet No. 3 and Béla Bartók's String Quartet No. 5 – two composers that strongly influenced her string quartet writing. The Quartet will also perform an excerpt from a new work addressing climate change that Fung is composing for them, tenor Nicholas Phan, and pianist Myra Huang, which will be premiered on May 30, 2024 at the Kaufman Music Center in New York. The new work centers around poet Claire Wahmanholm's prize-winning poem “O,” which took second place at the Academy of American Poets' inaugural Treehouse Climate Action Poem Prize.

Insects and Machines is the premiere commercial recording of Fung's first four string quartets, composed over a span of 18 years from 2001 to 2019. It will be released on October 27, 2023 on the Sono Luminus label. Truly a collaborative effort, the portrait album was recorded by the Jasper String Quartet (violinists J Freivogel and Karen Kim, violist Andrew Gonzalez, and cellist Rachel Henderson Freivogel) with the composer in the studio, in October 2022. The album title is borrowed from the subtitle of Fung's fourth quartet.

Vivian Fung has long been a friend and admired composer of the Jasper String Quartet. The Quartet first performed one of her works in 2019, and was immediately captivated by the visceral energy and impeccable craft of her writing.

The Jasper Quartet says, “Vivian's String Quartets Nos. 1–4 reflect a remarkable journey of absorbing, integrating, and synthesizing a unique spectrum of influences into her compositional voice. Unwavering in all of the works is a fierce heart, instrumental fearlessness, and an amazing instinct for texture. We are incredibly grateful to have recorded these works with Vivian in the studio and for the growth we experienced in the process.”

About the Music on the Album

The piece that became the third movement of Vivian Fung's String Quartet No. 1, “Pizzicato,” was composed while Fung was in residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in 2001, for a reading by the American String Quartet. Fung had been listening to and absorbing influences from the folk music of parts of Asia, including China and Indonesia, and incorporated them into this piece. She went on to compose the other three virtuosic movements of the piece over the next two years, with the Avalon String Quartet premiering the entire work in 2004.