Ariel Quartet Brings AMERICAN DREAM to The Perlman Music Program Suncoast

The Perlman Music Program Suncoast (PMP Suncoast) will present the Ariel Quartet's new program, “American Dream,” Thursday, April 4, 7 p.m., at The Ora, 578 McIntosh Road, Sarasota. The concert is presented in partnership with The Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee. Tickets are $40 and can be purchased at PMPSuncoast.org.

Lisa Berger, the executive director of PMP Suncoast explains that for the first half of the program, the quartet will select from a curated list of composers that have realized their ‘American Dream’. Each piece will be announced from the stage, instead of a predetermined program. She adds the concert concludes with Antonín Dvořák’s Quartet in F major, Op. 96 “American.” 

The Ariel Quartet members (Gershon Gerchikov, violin; Alexandra (Sasha) Kazovsky, violin; Jan Grüning, viola; and Amit Even–Tov, cello) in the program notes remark that “2023 marked 25 years of living, breathing and performing together in the organism that is the Ariel Quartet—a milestone that happens to coincide meaningfully with the receipt of our long-awaited permanent residency status in the United States. Every immigration story is one of two cultures meeting, the old and the new, the known and the unknown…familiar roots taking on new meaning in an unfamiliar environment.

‘American Dream’ explores this experience musically by featuring a variety of artists from all over the world, channeling their expressivity into an intuitive and powerful narrative with a decidedly theatrical feel. Works by past and present composers who have chosen to make their home in the United States converse freely with one another in a purposefully unannounced concert half. A few carefully chosen, inspiring words provide abstract and thought-provoking context. 

This rather unfamiliar form of presentation introduces a concert experience filled with a renewed sense of open mindedness and discovery, while simultaneously redefining the communicative potential of the traditional chamber music experience and serving as a musical metaphor for the way we aspire to see others and want to be seen ourselves: free of expectations, unprejudiced and with a truly open mind and heart.”

 

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