Violinist Olivia De Prato Releases Debut Solo Album STREYA

Olivia De Prato, co-founder and first violinist of the Mivos Quartet, announces the March 2, 2018 release of her debut solo album,Streya, on New Focus Recordings. A passionate advocate for new music, De Prato chose to record music by six composers with whom she has collaborated closely since moving to New York in 2005: Samson Young, Victor Lowrie, Ned Rothenberg, Taylor Brook, Reiko Füting, and Missy Mazzoli.

De Prato says of the composers on the new album, "I would describe each of them as a multifaceted artist - each brings a wide range of artistic abilities and perspectives to their work. As performers, improvisers, visual artists, and scholars of non-western musical traditions, the composers on this album represent the richly eclectic variety of influences that fascinate me in new music."

Three of the works were written in 2016 specifically for the album - Ned Rothenberg's Percorso insolito, Victor Lowrie's Streya, and Taylor Brook'sWane - while Reiko Futing's tanz.tanz (2010) and Samson Young's Ageha.Tokyo (2008) have been prominent in De Prato's solo repertoire. Missy Mazzoli's Vespers (2014) is a new version for violin and electronics from the original work written for Victoire.

Streya adds to De Prato's ensemble recordings on labels including Tzadik, New Amsterdam Records, New Focus Recordings, Sunnyside Records, Mode, Cantaloupe, Porter Records, and Harmonia Mundi. Her playing has been described as "flamboyant...convincing" by The New York Times, and Messaggero Veneto calls her an, "enchanting violinist." She has performed at the Bang on a Can Marathon, the Lucerne Festival with Pierre Boulez, the Ensemble Modern Festival, the Wien Modern Festival, the Shanghai New Music Week, and Lincoln Center Festival with Steve Reich and Brad Lubman.

Of the music on the album, De Prato writes, "Füting takes his inspiration from an in-depth analysis of Bach's Chaconne and the title of a Murakami novel in his piece tanz.tanz. In Percorso insolito, Rothenberg threads a fine line between fixed composition and improvisation, evoking the Japanese shakuhachi honkyoku solo music he has studied for years. Brook incorporates microtonality and multi-tracking in Wane as a means of transforming the harmonic palette of the solo instrument. Mazzoli's Vespers is a distorted secular take on the traditional Vespers prayer service, while Young's Ageha.Tokyo seamlessly embeds the violin into an audiovisual landscape. Lowrie's new work Streya originates directly from his experiences as an avid performer, moving between moments of musical repose and angular melodic lines."

To post a comment, you must register and login.