The Aizuri Quartet, Winners Of The 2022 Cleveland Quartet Award, Announce 2022-2023 Season Of Debuts
Aizuri Quartet's season opened on September 18, 2022 with the Sunrise program, marking their debut at Dallas Chamber Music Society.
By: A.A. Cristi Oct. 03, 2022
The GRAMMY-nominated Aizuri Quartet, continues its innovative approach to programming and performance in the 2022-23 season, including featured debuts at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, Texas Performing Arts, and Krannert Center for the Performing Arts as recipients of the Cleveland Quartet Award; the Library of Congress; Boston's Celebrity Series; the season opening concert of Brevard Music Center's new Parker Concert Hall; the 2023 Big Ears Festival; Dallas Chamber Music Society; Ottawa ChamberFest; and Impromptu Classical Concerts. Aizuri continues its role as WQXR Artist Propulsion Lab Fellows, and also releases new AizuriKids videos. Watch the latest AizuriKids Episode.
They also make returns this season to Ravinia, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Tippet Rise Arts Center in Montana, the Women's Musical Club of Toronto, and New Orleans Friends of Music. With Syrian clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, the Aizuris perform their Music and Migration program at the Civic Music Association in Des Moines and Armstrong Auditorium near Oklahoma City. University engagements include performances at Penn State Performing Arts Center, Auburn University's Gogue Performing Arts Center, Amherst College, Shenandoah Conservatory, University of Nevada Reno, University of Mississippi's Ford Center, University of North Texas, and Garmany Chamber Series at The University of Hartford.
The Aizuri Quartet performs four imaginative programs this season, including Sunrise, which traces a journey from darkness to dawn, delving into the ways in which the atmosphere, psychological power, and political metaphor of the night have been an inspiration for composers from the classical era to the present-day. Opening with a Clara Schumann song arranged by quartet cellist, Karen Ouzounian, and Bartók's Fourth Quartet, Sunrise opens its second half with Tanya Tagaq's Sivunittinni, before culminating in the warmth of Haydn's "Sunrise" Quartet.
Aizuri Quartet's season opened on September 18, 2022 with the Sunrise program, marking their debut at Dallas Chamber Music Society, and on September 21, 2022 at Auburn University's Gogue Performing Arts Center and September 30 at Amherst College. They perform Sunrise this season at Penn State University's Performing Arts Center on October 6, Shenandoah Conservatory on October 11, presented by Carnegie Hall in their debut at Weill Recital Hall on October 13, at Philadelphia Chamber Music Society on February 12, 2023, and Boston's Celebrity Series on May 3, 2023.
On October 4, 2022, the quartet performs the opening night concert in Brevard Music Center's new Parker Concert Hall in Brevard, North Carolina. Their program, a revised version of Sunrise, features Ouzounian's arrangement of Clara Schumann's Ich stand in dunkeln Träumen, Robert Schumann's String Quartet No. 1 in A minor, Tanya Tagaq's Sivunittinni, and Haydn's String Quartet Op. 76, No. 4 in B flat Major.
Tagaq's Sivunittinni opens Aizuri's second program this season, Song Emerging, alongside the first string quartet of Robert Schumann, whose writing was inextricably linked to romantic lieder and vocal music. A celebration of the most direct human expression in music, the Aizuri Songbook is a soulful, personal, and surprising collection of songs, including new works as well as classical lieder and traditional songs in new arrangements commissioned by the Aizuri Quartet, in which the players sing and play simultaneously.
Song Emerging launched on September 23 at Tippet Rise Arts Center in Fishtail, Montana, and will tour to University of Nevada, Reno's Apex Chamber Music Series on November 16; The Greene Space as WQXR Artist Propulsion Lab Fellows on November 18; Evergreen Woods in North Branford, Connecticut on November 20; Ravinia Festival on December 10; and the Library of Congress in Washington D. C. on December 18, 2022.
The Aizuri's third program, The Art of Translation, creatively juxtaposes works by Franz Schubert and pieces by some of today's most compelling new voices (Lembit Beecher, Hannah Kendall, Paul Wiancko, and Nina Shekhar) to explore the highly personal and expressive ways in which composers transform visual art and poetry into music and consider the dynamic nature of art.
The program will appear on February 19, 2023 at the Krannert Center for Performing Arts at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana; March 4 at Texas Performing Arts in Austin, TX; March 7 at the University of Mississippi's Ford Center; March 27 at the New Orleans Friends of Music; and March 30 at the University of Hartford's Garmany Chamber Series.
On February 23, 2023, the Women's Musical Club of Toronto presents a concert celebrating Icelandic-Canadian composer Fjóla Evans, featuring the Aizuri Quartet alongside pianist Talisa Blackman and vocalist Krista Kais-Prial in a world premiere by Evans commissioned by the club.
The Aizuris perform a modified version of The Art of Translation, closing with Haydn's String Quartet Op. 76 No. 4 in B-flat Major "Sunrise," on February 24, 2023 at Canada's Ottawa ChamberFest and February 26 at Impromptu Classical Concerts in Key West, Florida.
Music and Migration is a collaborative touring program offered with Syrian-American clarinetist and composer Kinan Azmeh. Each of the Aizuri members and Azmeh have different personal relationships to and experiences of migration, as do their families, and the music of this concert approaches the theme of migration in the broadest possible terms, both as a physical journey and state of mind, something that occurs both between and within countries. Stemming from a deep friendship between the Aizuri Quartet and Azmeh, and built around a new commission by composer Layale Chaker, as well as additional works for string quartet and clarinet by Azmeh, Michi Wiancko and Wang Lu, among others.
Music and Migration tours this season to Armstrong Auditorium in Edmond, Oklahoma on March 16, 2023 and to the Civic Music Association in Des Moines, Iowa on March 20, 2023.
On April 1, 2023, the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee presents Aizuri alongside guitarist Kyle Sanna in harpist and composer Maeve Gilchrist's Harpweaver, from the 2020 album of the same name. Watch the Harpweaver music video.
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