Intricate Machines is an exciting collaboration between the acclaimed Aizuri Quartet and rising American composers Katherine Balch, Sky Macklay, Phil Taylor, Daniel Temkin, and Nina C. Young.

Co-curated by Taylor and Temkin, this project of discovery and exploration sees the Aizuri Quartet tour five recent works through America’s Rust Belt along the I-80 corridor.  Concerts are planned in Pittsburgh (Frick Fine Arts Center), Lewisburg (Weis Center for the Performing Arts), Philadelphia (Ethical Society), and New York (Greenwich Music House), with the composers on hand to lead panel-style Q&A sessions after each performance.  In addition, the composers and the quartet will present guest lectures and outreach events at universities and community music schools in each venue city.

The works chosen for this project were carefully selected for their unique and original beauty, as well as their ability to illuminate one another in musical symbiosis: the searching in Taylor’s of embers and aspen leaves gives way to the warmth of Balch’s With Each Breathing (a whimsical response to e.e. cummings); witty musical syntax games in Macklay’s Many Many Cadences, contrast with the mystery and darkness of Young’s Memento Mori – Phase I (a meditation on the certainty of death); and the interconnected movements of Temkin’s Intricate Machines make nod to the brilliant, sophisticated mechanism that is the string quartet.  Together, these works poignantly touch upon many facets of human experience and show the vitality and diversity of contemporary American music today.

Known for “captivating performances…that meld intellect, technique, and emotions” (Washington Post), the Aizuri Quartet has built its reputation on championing contemporary works alongside masterworks of the past, and their fierce commitment to new works makes them ideal for this project.  Currently leading a five-concert curatorial residency at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the group has previously commissioned numerous significant works by Lembit Beecher, Caroline Shaw, Jennifer Higdon, and many others.  In December 2017, the New York Times wrote that the quartet’s”imaginative programming…places it in the new guard” of major groups, and ‘Intricate Machines’ is one initiative through which the Aizuris are significantly reinvigorating the string quartet genre.

We are especially excited to bring our roster of collaborators to different venues and cities throughout the mid-Atlantic region, where most audience members will gain exposure to these artists for the first time.  In addition, our project will further cement the selected pieces as major recent contributions to the string quartet canon.  Finally, both the composers and the quartet will strengthen our relationships with new-music communities in each city, especially as we work with presenters Alia Musica (Pittsburgh) and the Weis Center (Lewisburg) to grow their core audiences for new music with our project.

Program

Phil Taylor: of embers and aspen leaves (2017)

Katherine Balch: With Each Breathing (2015)

Sky Macklay: Many Many Cadences (2014)

Nina C. Young: Memento Mori – Phase I (2013)

Daniel Temkin: Intricate Machines (2016)

Venues

Frick Fine Arts Center (Pittsburgh, PA)

Weis Center (Lewisburg, PA)

Ethical Society (Philadelphia, PA)

Greenwich House (New York, NY)