PUBLIQuartet to Premiere WHAT IS AMERICAN: RHYTHM NATION

On Wednesday, December 4, 2024, at 7:00 pm at The Blue Building in New York City, the Unfiltered Music Festival will present the GRAMMY-nominated PUBLIQuartet in the world premiere of its new program, What Is American: Rhythm Nation, at Fotografiska New York.

What Is American: Rhythm Nation is the next issue in PUBLIQuartet's What Is American series, a GRAMMY-nominated album and touring project. This second volume features and celebrates American rhythmic traditions as expressions of bodily autonomy and tacit history-keeping. The program features original works by PUBLIQuartet and four new works by Pulitzer Prize finalists Jlin, Mazz Swift, Eddie Venegas, and Jeff Scott, made possible through a 2024 Chamber Music America Artistic Projects grant supported by the Howard Gilman Foundation. Each piece evokes a distinct rhythmic world, reflecting the plurality of American movements and protecting the unspoken spirit of their lineage's narratives.

The program features Baobab, a new work with an intricate, multi-layered percussion audiotrack by composer and Pulitzer Prize-finalist Jlin, incorporating live-improvised string samples from PUBLIQuartet to create a dynamic sonic landscape evoking both motion and timelessness.

Next up is the world premiere of Digging Gold; Deeper Blue, which marks a departure from Mazz Swift's recent works that explore the tradition of spirituals. Swift notes that the new piece reflects a desire to explore rhythm and groove through the lens of their own experience as a neuro-emergent composer, challenging "the virtuosity of the quartet as an ensemble."

Written to honor the memory of the composer's uncle, Jeff Scott's Blues for Buddy also receives its world premiere during the night's program. The piece sets lyrical blues melodies against march rhythms that evoke the tradition of New Orleans second-line parades and jazz works like Art Blakey's "Blues March."

Rounding out the program is Eddie Venegas's Cachumbambeando En Clave, which incorporates the blend of salsa, Afro-Cuban, Puerto Rican, and jazz languages that the composer encountered when he arrived in New York City from Venezuela. With clave rhythm as its foundation, this piece presents a variety of energetic rhythmic textures and characters, with a moment for improvised solos by the members of PUBLIQuartet along the way.

PUBLIQuartet's GRAMMY-nominated album, What is American - released June 17, 2022 on Bright Shiny Things - explores the resonance between contemporary, blues, jazz, accessible, and rock-inflected music, all of which trace their roots back to the Black and Indigenous music that inspired Dvorak's "American" String Quartet. Interrogating these traditions of our nation's complex history, PUBLIQuartet attempts to connect the dots, illuminating American concert music's past, present, and future. What Is American is ultimately a call to ponder the kaleidoscope of composers and diverse genres that make up America's rich musical history.

This season, PUBLIQuartet brings versions of What is American to Emory University as Schwartz Artists-in-Residence on Friday, November 1, 2024 at 8:00 pm; the 21c Museum Hotel in Louisville, KY presented by New Lens on Sunday, November 3, 2024 at 7:00 pm; and to the University of Wisconsin Madison on Friday, November 22, 2024 at 7:30 pm. PUBLIQuartet will be featured in a recital with founding quartet member and composer Jessie Montgomery to celebrate her tenure as the University of Iowa School of Music's 2024-2025 Composer-in-Residence on Thursday, November 21, 2024 at 7:30 pm. PUBLIQuartet will also perform a new version of bass-baritone Davóne Tines' MASS on Monday, November 25, 2024 at 7:20 pm at Music Mondays in New York City.

Performance Details

Wednesday, December 4, 2024 at 7:00pm
Unfiltered Music III Night Four: PUBLIQuartet
Blue Building | New York, NY
Tickets: $25 for Members/Patrons, $45 for General Admission Tickets.
Link: https://newyork.fotografiska.com/en/events/in-concert-unfiltered-music-iii-night-four

Program:
Jlin - Baobab (2024) [World Premiere]
Mazz Swift - Digging Gold; Deeper Blue (2024) [World Premiere]
Jeff Scott - Blues for Buddy (2024) [World Premiere]
Eddie Venegas - Cachumbambeando En Clave (2024) [World Premiere]

PUBLIQuartet's 2024 Chamber Music America Artistic Projects grant was made possible by the support of the Howard Gilman Foundation.

Photo credit: Lelanie Foster