The Apple Hill String Quartet to Perform at St. Bart's, 3/8

The Apple Hill String Quartet to Perform World-Renowned Composer Meredith Monk's only String Quartet, Stringsongs, as part of Meredith Monk's 50th Year Celebrations.

The Apple Hill String Quartet, New Hampshire's only resident string quartet, will perform on St. Bart's Great Music Series on Sunday, March 8 at 2:30 p.m. The quartet, violinists Elise Kuder and Colleen Jennings, violist Michael Kelley, and cellist Rupert Thompson, will play Suite for String Quartet and Fiddler by Brooklyn-based composer Dana Lyn, who will make a special appearance to perform this piece; Stringsongs by NYC composer Meredith Monk; and Benjamin Britten's String Quartet #2.

New York city-born Meredith Monk is a composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer. Since the 1960s, Monk has created multi-disciplinary works that combine music, theatre, and dance. A pioneer in what is now called "extended vocal technique" and "interdisciplinary performance," Monk creates works that thrive at the intersection of music and movement, image and object, light and sound in an effort to discover and weave together new modes of perception. She was recently named an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the Republic of France and the 2012 Composer of the Year by Musical America. Monk is also one of NPR's 50 Great Voices, and has received a 2012 Doris Duke Artist Award and a 2011 Yoko Ono Lennon Courage Award for the Arts. Since graduating from Sarah Lawrence College in 1964, Monk has received numerous honors including the prestigious MacArthur "Genius" Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, three "Obies," and two "Bessie" awards for Sustained Creative Achievement. She holds honorary Doctor of Arts degrees from Bard College, the University of the Arts, The Juilliard School, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the Boston Conservatory. Monk has made more than a dozen recordings, including the 2008 Grammy-nominated impermanence and the highly acclaimed Songs of Ascension.

Dana Lyn, a Brooklyn, New York-based violinist, arranger, and composer has performed at New York's Lincoln Center, Beacon Theater, Carnegie and Town Halls, as well as folk festivals and dive bars the world over. As a violinist, she is at home in multiple musical worlds, ranging from classical/contemporary classical to folk, new and improvisatory music, and fiddler music. Along with appearances on Saturday Night Live, The Late Show with David Letterman, and the Conan O'Brien Show, she was cast as an onstage musician in the Public Theatre's 2008 Shakespeare in the Park production of Hamlet, in the first season of The Bridge Project, co-produced by the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Old Vic and directed by Academy-Award winner Sam Mendes, and in the New Group's production of Clive, directed by Ethan Hawke.

The Apple Hill String Quartet has recently returned from a three-week tour of the Middle East as part of the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music's Playing for Peace program, an innovative outreach program that focuses on social change and conflict resolution through music. The quartet visited Turkey, both the Turkish and Greek sections of Cyprus, Israel, and Jordan. Over their 18-day trip the quartet led 300 music students in 5 master classes, 2 chamber music workshops, 3 orchestral workshops and performed 6 concerts for more than 3,000 people.

Tickets at $25 and $15 for seniors and students will be available online at mmpaf.org or by calling the Concert Office at (212) 378-0248. Tickets will also be available at the door on the afternoon of the concert. St. Bartholomew's is located on Park Ave. between 50th and 51stSt. in Manhattan.

The Great Music Series, produced by the Mid-Manhattan Performing Arts Foundation, Inc., offers a diverse variety of concerts from large scale choral works and organ concerts in the church to chamber music in the acoustically remarkable chapel. Crucial to the musical programming of the series is St. Bartholomew's Choir, a fully professional choir, and the Boy and Girl Choristers, renowned as one of the finest children's choir in the metropolitan area. The church also possesses an Aeolian/Skinner pipe organ of 168 stops, the largest in New York City and considered to be one of the greatest examples of the American Classic Organ of the 20th century.

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