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Arcata Bay String Quartet
Much in the same way that a garage band comes together to learn and play favorite tunes before perhaps adventuring into writing music of their own, the string quartet was an 18th and 19th Century phenomenon that brought communities of musicians together in living rooms and salons, eager to explore the wave of new music that was being composed for two violins, viola, and cello. While the endlessly inventive Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn perfected the classical string quartet in relative musical isolation, composers all over Europe brought their own original ideas to the art form while staying true to the established basic structure. Fast forward to the post-war Americas of the 20th Century and the same humble ensemble becomes a primary testing ground for the integration of folk, ethnic, and cultural influences that continues to push the boundaries of sound creation and playing techniques into the 21st Century.
In honor of this old, yet utterly contemporary art form, the Cal Poly Humboldt School of Dance, Music, and Theatre presents an exciting Faculty Artist Series concert featuring the Arcata Bay String Quartet. Join them for an afternoon of fresh new music, all composed within the last ten years, on Sunday, April 3rd at 2:00 p.m. in Fulkerson Recital Hall. The repertoire has been selected to be both interesting and accessible to an audience with diverse interests and experience with classical and contemporary music, and it includes a wide variety of mostly short pieces. Concert tickets are $15 General, $5 Child, and $5 for Cal Poly Humboldt students with ID, and may be purchased at the door or in advance at centerarts.humboldt.edu. Select “School of Dance, Music, and Theatre” from the “All Events” drop down menu and select your event. A $7 Livestream ticket may be purchased on the same site if attending the concert in person is not an option.
Founded in 2017, the Arcata Bay String Quartet (ABSQ) features violinists Cindy Moyer and Karen Davy, violist Sherry Hanson, and cellist Garrick Woods. The ensemble is committed to performing the full range of works composed for the string quartet, from well known pieces from the classical, romantic and modern eras, to the newest compositions being written today. The repertoire for this particular program will include two world premieres, two Humboldt County composers, three female composers, one Mexican American composer, two African American composers, one Azerbaijani composer, and zero dead European male composers.
Mario Godoy is a Mexican American composer, saxophonist, sound designer, and music educator born in Riverside, CA and based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His compositional style is characterized by the “coalescing of rhythm, color, and layered elements.” His new work “Aperture” was commissioned by ABSQ, and this is the world premiere performance. After Karen Davy secured a grant for the commission from the CSU Emeritus and Retired Faculty and Staff Association, she found Godoy, who had recently written music for the Friction Quartet, which includes violinist and Humboldt County native Otis Harriel. “The piece is constructed of short rhythmic patterns, giving it lots of energy,” says Cindy Moyer. “The notes are not hard, and the rhythm doesn’t appear hard, but there are no rhythmic patterns, and thus it is turning out to be quite tricky!”
The second world premiere work is “The Time Within” by Brian Post, who has been teaching composition, music theory and music technology classes at Cal Poly Humboldt since the fall of 1998. “The Time Within” is a distinctly modern piece, with the live strings playing along with a
pre-recorded computer-generated track. Each player has short musical fragments to play, repeating them as they wish, meaning that every performance is different and unique.
The second Humboldt County composer featured on the program is Michael Kibbe, a native Californian who was born in San Diego and whose storied education and vocation in music performance, composition, and teaching moved him to Los Angeles and then gradually further north, with a few detours, until finally landing on the North Coast a decade or so ago. “Quartet For Vanessa, Op. 284” was written for Kibbe’s wife during the COVID pandemic and follows a traditional structure of four movements, with each movement reflecting an intimate connection to birth, life, and loss.
Leslie La Barre is a California-based composer and conductor whose specializations include multidisciplinary collaborations, instrumental conducting, film orchestral literature, and musicology. With a background in jazz piano, percussion, oboe and English Horn, her music blends the respective elements of both jazz and classical genres. “Resounding” was written in 2015 for the Southern California Chamber Music Workshop. “This is the most dissonant, modern-sounding piece on the program,” says Moyer. “The basic material is a folk-song melody that reminds me of Amazing Grace. The piece begins with that melody and returns to it after several contrasting, somewhat pointillistic sections that are based on material from that very simple melody.”
Born and raised in Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the 1980’s, Jessie Montgomery’s compositions are currently performed by ensembles around the world. Profoundly influenced in her youth by the energy of community development and artist expression all around her, Montgomery’s work interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, language, and social justice, making her one of the “most relevant interpreters of 21st-century American sound and experience.” ABSQ revisits her 2012 composition “Strum,” which they performed for the first time last fall. The Washington Post describes the composition in glowing terms. “Turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life, “Strum” sounded like a handful of American folk melodies tossed into a strong wind, cascading and tumbling joyfully around one another.”
Franghiz Ali-Zadeh is an Azerbaijani composer and pianist, currently living in Germany. She is best known for her works that combine the musical tradition of the Azerbaijani “mugam,” a complex modal system wedding classical poetry to musical improvisation, and 20th century Western compositional techniques. “Reqs,” or “Dance,” is a fun and energetic work. “It uses a scale that has 3 consecutive 1/2 steps and then an augmented 2nd, so it sounds very exotic when compared with music that uses our typical major and minor scales,” explains Moyer. “Some of it sounds somewhat Spanish, which makes sense if you consider the Moorish invasions of Spain and the music they brought with them.”
A native of South Carolina, Charlton Singleton began his musical studies at the age of three on the piano. He would then go on to study the organ, violin, cello, and the trumpet throughout elementary, middle, high school, and at South Carolina State University. Singleton is widely known as a trumpet player, a composer, and a music educator. In 2020, he and his band Ranky Tanky won a Grammy Award for the Best Regional Roots Music Album category for their sophomore release “Good Time.” His string quartet “Testimony” reflects his experience growing up in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. “(The Prayer Band) is not an ordinary band. This band is usually three to four people who have their voices, their hands, and their feet to create music. ‘Testimony’ is written from the Prayer Band experience,” writes Singleton, “and from
specific rhythms in African American churches and communities, the ‘Gullah Clap’ (on beats two, two-and, and four) and the ‘Half Clap’ (on beat one only).”
The Ali-Zadeh and Singleton compositions are both commissions from the Kronos Quartet’s 50 for the Future Project. The website for the project describes its goals succinctly. “Kronos presents a free library of fifty contemporary works designed to guide string quartets in developing and honing the skills required for the performance of 21st-century repertoire.” Learn more about this important and ambitious project at 50ftf.kronosquartet.org.
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