Photo Flash: Arion Chamber Music Celebrates Black History Month With Quartet 131

The New York City based Arion Chamber Music Series began their 5th Anniversary Season with featured guests Quartet 131 on February 21st celebrating Black History Month and the Music of Inclusion.

Quartet 131, whose musicians include Lilit Gampel and Laura Goldberg, violin, Andy Lin, viola and Robert La Rue, cello performed a concert probing three distinctly American music traditions: Afro-American, Native American and American Cinema. Featured were works by Florence Price - the first African American woman to have been recognized as a symphonic composer and the first to have had a composition presented by a major American orchestra. Performed were her "Five Folksongs in Counterpoint," followed by Charles Griffes's "Sketch Based on Native American Theme" (Chippewa Farewell Song) and a little-known concert work by cinema's renown film scorer Bernard Hermann: Echoes. The program concluded with Quartet op. 9, no. 5, F minor, by the great Czech composer Antonin Dvorak who came to NYC and articulated the "American musical identity."