ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE
The Harlem & Catalyst Quartets join forces in a dazzling program of exciting new works and Mendelssohn’s exuberant Octet for Strings
PROGRAM
Various: CQ Minute (Ten short works co-commissioned by CMDetroit for the Catalyst Quartet in celebration of its 10th Anniversary) - Midwest Premiere
Kishi Bashi (b. 1975): Con Brio
Billy Childs (b. 1957): The Face Regret
Jessie Montgomery (b. 1981): Build
Paquito D’Rivera (b. 1948): But, Just a Minute?!
Andy Akiho (b. 1979): Presidio
Kevin Puts (b. 1972): Emerge
Joan Tower (b. 1938): A short flight
Angelica Négron (b. 1981): Lo infinite
Caroline Shaw (b. 1982): Bittersweet synonym
Nick Revel (b. 1986): Time Capsule*
Paul Mekailian (b. 1998): A future in process*
*CQ Minute Competition Winner
Chick Corea: The Adventures of Hippocrates
Kenji Bunch: the still, small voice
Felix Mendelssohn: Octet in E-flat major, Op. 20
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Catalyst Quartet
Karla Donehew Perez, VIOLIN
Abi Fayette, VIOLIN
Paul Laraia, VIOLA
Karlos Rodriguez, CELLO
The Catalyst Quartet has toured widely throughout the United States and abroad, including sold-out performances at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., at Chicago’s Harris Theater, Miami’s New World Center, and Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall in New York. The quartet has been guest soloists with the Cincinnati Symphony, New Haven Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá, and has served as principal players and featured ensemble with the Sphinx Organization’s Sphinx Virtuosi, on six national tours. They have been invited to perform at such major music festivals as Mainly Mozart in San Diego, the Festival del Sole in Napa with Joshua Bell, Sitka Music Festival, Strings Music Festival, and the Grand Canyon Music Festival, where they appear annually.
Recent seasons have brought international engagements in Russia, South Korea, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and Puerto Rico, and expanded tours throughout the United States. The ensemble’s New York City presence has included concerts on the Café Series at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, for Schneider Concerts at The New School, and six concerts with GRAMMY Award-winning jazz vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant for Jazz at Lincoln Center, for which the subsequent recording won the 2018 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album. The Catalyst Quartet launched its New York concert series CQ@Howl in 2018.
This season the quartet celebrates its 10th anniversary with CQ Minute, a commissioning project of 10 miniature string quartets with works by Andy Akiho, Kishi Bashi, Billy Childs, Paquito D’Rivera, Tania Leon, Jessie Montgomery, Kevin Puts, Caroline Shaw, Joan Tower, and one young composer to be selected from a national call for scores.
“Like all great chamber groups, the Catalyst Quartet is beautiful to watch, like a family in lively conversation at the dinner table: anticipating, interrupting, changing subjects.”
Harlem Quartet
Ilmar Gavilán, VIOLIN
Melissa White, VIOLIN
Jaime Amador, VIOLA
Felix Umansky, CELLO
The New York-based Harlem Quartet has been praised for its "panache" by The New York Times and hailed in the Cincinnati Enquirer for “bringing a new attitude to classical music, one that is fresh, bracing and intelligent.” Since its public debut at Carnegie Hall in 2006, the ensemble has thrilled audiences and students in 47 states as well as in the U.K., France, Belgium, Brazil, Panama, Canada, Venezuela, Japan, Ethiopia, and South Africa.
The Harlem Quartet is known for its diverse programming that combines music from the standard string quartet canon with jazz, Latin, and contemporary works, as well as for its collaborative approach to performance that is continually broadening the ensemble’s repertoire and audience reach through artistic partnerships with other musicians from the classical and jazz worlds, and for its an ongoing commitment to educational activities. In addition to performing a varied menu of string quartet literature across the country and around the world, Harlem Quartet has collaborated with such distinguished and diverse artists as jazz pianists Chick Corea and Aldo López-Gavilán; classical pianists Michael Brown, Awadagin Pratt, Misha Dichter, and Fei-Fei; violist Ida Kavafian; cellist Carter Brey; clarinetists Paquito D’Rivera, Eddie Daniels, Anthony McGill, and David Shifrin; saxophonist Tim Garland; jazz legends Ted Nash, Gary Burton, Stanley Clarke, and John Patitucci; the Shanghai Quartet; and Imani Winds.
The Harlem Quartet’s 2019-2020 engagements included a weeklong Quad City Arts Residency (Rock Island, Illinois); debuts with Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Dizzy’s Club, Chamber Music Tulsa, Stanford Live, and Duke University; and return engagements with the Chamber Music Society of Detroit, the Phillips Collection (Washington, DC), Asheville Chamber Music Series, and Calgary Pro Musica. Highlights of the quartet’s abbreviated 2020-21 season included concerts at Wheaton College (Wheaton, Illinois) and Chamber Music Concerts (Ashland, Oregon) and with pianist Michael Brown at Friends of Chamber Music (Denver, Colorado).
The Quartet’s recording career began in 2007 when White Pine Music issued Take the "A" Train, a release featuring the string quartet version of that jazz standard by Billy Strayhorn; the CD was highlighted that year in the November issue of Strings magazine. More recently the quartet collaborated with jazz pianist Chick Corea in a Grammy-winning Hot House album that included Corea’s "Mozart Goes Dancing," which won a separate Grammy as Best Instrumental Composition. The Quartet’s latest album, the July 2020 release Cross Pollination, features works by Debussy, William Bolcom, Dizzy Gillespie, and Guido López-Gavilán.
“The Harlem Quartet . . . play all of this music very beautifully indeed. They have a warm, well balanced corporate sonority, rock solid rhythm, and the ability to play hard without coarsening the tone unnecessarily.”