Del Sol String Quartet to Play NYC's Cornelia Street Cafe in January

The ever-adventurous Del Sol String Quartet will perform a work from their latest lauded album Peter Sculthorpe: The Complete String Quartets with Didjeridu along with other favorites from their formidable repertoire on Monday, January 12 at 9pm and 10pm

Del Sol String Quartet returns to Cornelia Street Café (29 Cornelia Street) on Monday, January 12th for two 45-minute sets at 9:00pm and 10:00 pm. The group will perform works from Pierre Jalbert's Quartet no. 4; Elena Kats-Chernin's Fast Blue Village; and Lou Harrison's QuartetSet. In addition, the quartet kicks off each set with Peter Sculthorpe's Quartet no. 14, one of the pieces from their groundbreaking new album Peter Sculthorpe: The Complete String Quartets with Didjeridu. Just last week, The New York Times raved that the quartet's performance of Peter Sculthorpe, "creates a hypnotic sound world well worth exploring." For more information click here. Reservations can be made here or by calling 212.989.9319.

New York audiences can also see Del Sol String Quartet in STRING THEORY at SubCulture (45 Bleeker Street) on Thursday, January 15, 2015, at 7:30pm. Del Sol String Quartet joins the American Modern Ensemble, JACK Quartet, PUBLIQuartet and conductor Delta David Gier for an unforgettable evening of world premieres from Jacob Bancks, Sidney Boquiren and Robert Paterson and modern masterpieces by Chinary Ung, Jessie Montgomery, John Zorn and John Luther Adams. This all-star string summit will culminate with all groups performing together with Maestro Gier at the helm. Tickets may be purchased here.

Praised as "masters of all things they survey" by Gramophone and as "a stalwart force for new music in the Bay Area" by the San Francisco Chronicle, the Del Sol String Quartet's 7th album, Peter Sculthorpe: The Complete String Quartets with Didjeridu continues their joyous exploration of non-European music. Born out of a collaboration with the composer and the exceptional didjeridu player Stephen Kent at the Other Minds Festival in 2006, the recording is a stunning history of place in sound, with the deep hum of the aboriginal drone pipe as the sound of the earth itself. It is also a poignant tribute to Sculthorpe, who passed away in August 2014.

The exotically pastoral String Quartet No. 14, "Quamby," inspired by a story of Australian colonial history Sculthorpe's father told his son during the composer's self-described "solitary but otherwise idyllic" childhood in Tasmania.

"These pieces are incredible and shamelessly beautiful," says Del Sol founder and violist Charlton Lee. "He's tackling incredibly difficult topics, yet his treatment of them contains this lovely element of hope. He was an optimistic person overall, so despite the difficulties the pieces bring up they tend to end optimistically with hope for the future, indicating that we humans have the capacity to improve."

Sculthorpe believed that what was extremely local had the greatest capacity to speak universally. Thanks to this recording, his work can finally receive the universal recognition that he deserves as one of the great compositional voices of the past century.

To post a comment, you must register and login.