Composer Anthony Cheung Collaborates with Parker Quartet and Mezzo-Soprano Fleur Barron on New Commission
This program is tied together by themes of nature, ecopoetics, and heritage. At its center is a new composition for string quartet and mezzo soprano by composer Anthony Cheung, which draws inspiration from the poetry of Arthur Sze and Victoria Chang. With his poetry, Arthur Sze is associated with the ecopoetics movement, and much of Victoria Chang's poetry is deeply influenced by the relationship to the natural environment. Their work combines aesthetics from traditional Asian poetic forms that are deeply linked to themes of the natural world, with contemporary resonances. The members of our quartet and mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron are primarily of Asian heritage, and it is deeply important to us to give voice to Asian artists, which we're thrilled that the collaboration with Anthony, Arthur, and Victoria, does on so many levels.
Concert Program
Brahms (arr. Parker Quartet): Im Herbst from Fünf Gesänge, Op. 104
John Luther Adams: The Wind in High Places
Anthony Cheung: New Work [PCMS Co-Commission]
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Mahler (arr. Cheung): Der Einsame im Herbst from Das Lied von der Erde
Brahms: String Quartet No. 3 in B-flat major, Op. 67
Tour Dates
November 15-26, 2024
To further this tie within the program, the text of Der Einsame im Herbst from Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde is based on a poem by Tang Dynasty poet Qian Qi. Both the Mahler and the Brahms Im Herbst, which opens the program, use nature as a metaphor - autumn as the time preceding the eternal winter, so tie into the program in a poetic and emotional sense. Between the Brahms and Mahler is John Luther Adams's Wind in High Places, which is a meditative experience of the instruments' natural occurring harmonics and represents the idea of wind and its forces. This piece has been described as "delicately sparse and wonderfully poetic", and Luther Adams is known for being an environmental activist by putting nature as the central inspiration for his life’s work as a composer. We bookend the concert with music of Brahms, closing with his quartet in B flat Major, which has such a wonderful feeling of what Brahms's own relationship to nature might have been.
I have been immersed in the luminous, image-driven poetry of Chinese-American poet Arthur Sze (b. 1950) for the past few years, having already set several of his poems in my large-scale song cycle, “the echoing of tenses.” Resoundingly admired in poetry circles and winner of the 2019 National Book Award for Poetry, his first ten collections spanning five decades of work were published as “The Glass Constellation” in 2021. Arthur’s lyrical, evocative work is infused with natural imagery, and though quietly contemplative, is charged with the careful power of observation, timing, and placement, challenging the established western order of word hierarchies in favor of multiple image-driven possibilities, a practice gleaned through the close study of Tang dynasty masters. “Ecopoetics” has only recently become a defined literary movement or genre, but it has roots throughout the history of poetry. And long before the movement arose, Sze, one of its best known figures, was writing on the intersection of culture, society, and the natural world that explored the synchronicity of disparate images, historical events, and peoples. Now more than ever, his patient and lyrical work speaks to me in a globalized world that is trying to make sense of humanity amidst irreparable loss and destruction. This work, and the music that I hope to create in its light, shows that the quiet practice of reverent observation can have a charged ethical imperative. Between ancient and modern China, his home in Santa Fe, and countless recollections of historical events and geographical places and place-names, these poems intersect sequences of images that have no established hierarchical order, much like the ancient Chinese poems that inspired them and the Native American cultures that inform them (he is Professor Emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts, where he mentored several generations of Native American poets). And as a cataloger of experiences, whether they are “scientifically" observed or humming with erotic love, Sze’s perspective is uniquely Asian-American, combining traditional Chinese poetics and Taoist practices of non-attachment with contemporary issues. I also find that his verse, lends itself beautifully to musical settings — there is a mellifluous and spontaneous flow that is deeply musical in nature.
- Anthony Cheung
Contact Us
We invite you to contact us now about finding a date to bring the Parker Quartet & Fleur Barron to your series in the 2024/25 season.