Quartet 131 Launches 2020 Arion Chamber Music Series

The Arion Chamber Music Series began their 5th Anniversary Season with featured guests Quartet 131 on February 21st at their resident venue, Christ & St. Stephens Church located at 120 W. 69th St. in New York's Lincoln Square Arts District.

Quartet 131, whose musicians include Lilit Gampel and Laura Goldberg, violin, Andy Lin, viola and Robert La Rue, cello performed a concert of inclusion 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."