Outdoor Concerts at The Aldrich Museum
Featuring Lotus Chamber Music Collective
Friday, September 11, 2020 – 6:30 PM
SOLD OUT!
Friday, September 25, 2020 – 6:30 PM
SOLD OUT!
In collaboration with The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, the RSO is thrilled to present a two-part concert series featuring Lotus Chamber Music Collective, set outdoors in The Aldrich Sculpture Garden (258 Main Street, Ridgefield, CT). The first concert on September 11 considers the concept of freedom, featuring music by American composers and composers who influenced American music. The program includes pieces by Kaitlyn Raitz, Florence Price, George Gershwin, and Felix Mendelssohn exploring how each composer’s identities and their sense of personal freedom impacts their works. The second concert on September 25 delves into ways we navigate physical and mental spaces through the lens of our identities. The featured composers consider the question “How do the spaces we actively create or inactively participate in effect the way we interact with the world?” The program includes works by Caroline Shaw, Astor Piazzolla, Rhiannon Giddens, Hawa Kassé Mady Debaté, and Jessie Montgomery.
The core ensemble of Lotus Chamber Music Collective performing the concerts is comprised of Tiffany Weiss, violin, Emily Frederick, violin, Brianne Lugo, viola, and Sasha Ono, cello. The Lotus Chamber Music Collective’s mission is to strengthen communities through highly accessible music and social experiences that reflect the hopes, dreams, and concerns of community members, with the aim of highlighting the diversity in our world. Lotus Chamber Music Collective is a recipient of a Chamber Music America Ensemble Forward Grant, made possible with generous support from the New York Community Trust.
Please bring a lawn chair or blanket for seating in the Sculpture Garden lawn, wear a mask, and observe social distancing. All required COVID-19 protocols will be enforced. Aldrich and RSO staff will be onsite to provide assistance with protocols for everyone’s safety and convenience.
To hear from the Quartet about the upcoming performances, click here: Lotus Chamber Music Collective
CONCERT PROGRAMS
September 11, 2020
This concert will be performed in reverse chronological order as the quartet explores the concept of freedom through music. This program features music by American composers and composers who influenced American music. Through their compositions, we will go on an exploration of how composer identities and sense of personal freedom impacts their works to this day.
Thistle & Lace by Kaitlyn Raitz (b.-)
Commissioned by Lotus Chamber Music Collective for Violin & Cello
Excerpts from “5 Folksongs in Counterpoint” by Florence B. Price (1887-1953)
Calvary
Oh My Darlin’ Clementine
Swing Low Sweet Chariot
Lullaby for String Quartet by George Gershwin (1898-1937)
String Quartet in A minor Op.13 by Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Adagio – Allegro Vivace
String Quartet in E-flat Major String Quartet by Fanny Mendelssohn (1805-1847)
Adagio ma non troppo
Allegretto
Romaze
Allegro molto vivace
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September 25, 2020
This concert program is an exploration of the ways we navigate the spaces around us through the lens of our identities. Each of us and each of the composers walk through the world with identities that place us into various physical and mental spaces. How do the spaces we actively create or inactively participate in effect the way we interact with the world?
Entr’acte by Caroline Shaw (b.1982)
String Quartet in C minor op.1 no.4 by Joseph Bologne aka Chevalier St.Georges (1745-1799)
Allegro Moderato
Rondeau
Cumberland Rising by Kaitlyn Raitz
Commissioned by Lotus Chamber Music Collective for string trio
At the Purchaser’s Option with variations by Rhiannon Giddens (b.1977-)
arr. Jacob Garchik b.1976
Tegere Tulon by Hawa Kassé Mady Debaté (b. 1949-)
Funkturu
arr. Jacob Garchik b. 1976
Strum by Jessie Montgomery (b.1981-)
* Videos & Notes for the September 25th Concert (click on the titles for the videos)
Entr’acte by Caroline Shaw
This piece was inspired by a Haydn String quartet and mentions how the quartet “take you to the other side of Alice’s looking glass in a kind of absurd, subtle, technicolor transition.” During this time where we are in isolation, a lot of us are consuming arts and books depending on our own and others’ imaginations to take us places we physically can’t go. This rare opportunity we have to stay physically put, has given many of us the opportunity to let our imaginations take us places.
String Quartet in C minor by Joseph Bologne aka Chevalier St.Georges
Bologne was a prolific Black composer who was a fencer, conductor, master violinist, and composer around the time of Mozart.
Cumberland Rising by Kaitlyn Raitz
Commissioned by Lotus Chamber Music Collective for string trio and is a musical representation of the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee
At the Purchaser’s Option with variations by Rhiannon Giddens
arr. Jacob Garchik b.1976
At the Purchaser’s Option with variations is an instrumental variation of a song from her album Freedom Highway (Nonesuch, 2017), arranged by Jacob Garchik. She wrote the song after finding in a book a 19th-century advertisement for a 22-year-old female slave whose 9-month-old baby was also for sale, but “at the purchaser’s option.” This piece comes from that advertisement, and from thinking about what that woman’s life might have been like.
Tegere Tulon: Funkturu by Hawa Kassé Mady Debaté
arr. Jacob Garchik
Strum by Jessie Montgomery
Inspired by Dvorak and folk music and has a pulsing, driving rhythmic textures and structures that move and change throughout the piece.
