Oct. 11: MSM Presents the American String Quartet in the NY Premiere of Vivian Fung’s String Quartet No. 4

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Katy Salomon | Morahan Arts and Media
katy@morahanartsandmedia.com | 863.660.2214 

Manhattan School of Music Presents the American String Quartet
in the New York Premiere of Vivian Fung’s String Quartet No. 4, October 11

“Inspired by the sounds of insects that buzzed around her on a walk in Cambodia, Fung merged those sounds with ambient city noise to create a tapestry of buzzing tremolos, shifting rhythms and swooping dynamics. It’s a stream of consciousness that should repay rehearing.” – The Aspen Times

www.vivianfung.ca | www.americanstringquartet.com 
 

New York, NY (September 23, 2019) — On Friday, October 11, 2019 at 7:30pm, Manhattan School of Music presents Artists in Residence, the American String Quartet, in the New York premiere of JUNO Award-winning Canadian composer Vivian Fung’s String Quartet No. 4, “Insects and Machines.” The program also includes Haydn’s String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 76, No. 4, “Sunrise” and Brahms’ String Quintet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 111 featuring guest violist Danielle Farina.

Vivian Fung’s String Quartet No. 4, “Insects and Machines,” commissioned by the Red Bank Chamber Music Society in New Jersey, is inspired by the noises that permeate our daily lives. Fung says, “On a recent trip to Cambodia, I was especially attuned to the persistent noises of buzzing insects that accompanied my walk through the thick jungle, and this cacophony gelled with my emotional reaction to the terrible genocide of the Khmer people. I give voice to this background babbling in this quartet, organizing the various moments as episodes that freely morph from one event into another. One can hear buzzing at the beginning that turns into a waltz, which in turn transforms into a motoric adventure of machine-like chuggings-along. Much like the sound of thumping bass in a neighboring car, the episodes come in as waves and then disappear into the distance to be replaced by other soundscapes. The end result is an unrelenting fast and virtuosic 12-minute tour-de-force quartet.” Listen to String Quartet No. 4 and see a preview of the score.

Performance Information
Manhattan School of Music Presents the American String Quartet
Friday, October 11, 2019 at 7:30pm
Greenfield Hall, Manhattan School of Music | 130 Claremont Avenue | New York, NY 10027
Tickets: $15 adults, $10 students and seniors
More Information: https://www.msmnyc.edu/performances/american-string-quartet/  

Performers:
Peter Winograd, violin
Laurie Carney, violin
Daniel Avshalomov, viola
Wolfram Koessel, cello
Featuring Danielle Farina, viola 

Program:
HAYDN: String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 76, No. 4, “Sunrise”
VIVIAN FUNG: String Quartet No. 4,  “Insects and Machines” (New York Premiere)
BRAHMS: String Quintet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 111 feat. Danielle Farina, viola

About Vivian Fung
JUNO Award-winning composer Vivian Fung has a unique talent for combining idiosyncratic textures and styles into large-scale works, reflecting her multicultural background. NPR calls her “one of today’s most eclectic composers.” This is supported by many of her latest works, including Humanoid for solo cello and prerecorded electronics; Clarinet Quintet: Frenetic Memories, a reflection on her travels to visit minority groups in China’s Yunnan province; Earworms, commissioned by Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, which musically depicts our diverted attention spans and multi-tasking lives; and The Ice Is Talking for solo percussion and electronics, commissioned by the Banff Centre, using three ice blocks to illustrate the beauty and fragility of our environment. 

Highlights of Fung’s 2019–2020 season include the UK premiere of Birdsong, performed by violinist Midori at Kings Place in London, world premiere performances of a new trumpet concerto with trumpeter Mary Elizabeth Bowden and the Erie Philharmonic, performances of Dust Devils by The Philadelphia Orchestra led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra led by Peter Oundjian, Fanfare with the Florida Orchestra, Aqua by the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal under conductor James Gaffigan, Earworms with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra led by Bramwell Tovey, Pizzicato with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra led by Miguel Harth-Bedoya. Fung will also write new works commissioned by Standing Wave Ensemble in Vancouver and L’arc Trio in San Francisco.

Recent season highlights include a new orchestral work, A Child Dreams of Toys, commissioned by the 2019 Winnipeg New Music Festival; a new Concerto for Two Violins and String Orchestra, for the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, which was toured throughout the Maritime provinces and will make its way to Ontario and Quebec this summer; and the world premiere of String Quartet No. 4 “Insects and Machines,” commissioned by the Red Bank Chamber Music Society and performed by the American String Quartet.

Fung has a deep interest in exploring cultures through travel and research. In early 2019, Fung traveled to Cambodia to connect with her roots and collect research for a new opera. She traveled to Southwest China in 2012 to study minority music and cultures, continuing research that previously inspired Yunnan Folk Songs (2011), commissioned by Fulcrum Point New Music in Chicago with support from the MAP Fund.  As a composer whose trips often inspire her music, Fung has also explored diverse cultures in North Vietnam, Spain, and Indonesia.  She toured Bali in 2004, 2008, and 2010, and competed in the Bali Arts Festival as an ensemble member and composer in Gamelan Dharma Swara.

FuFung has received numerous awards and grants, including the 2015 Jan V. Matejcek New Classical Music Award for achievement in new music from the Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN), a Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, the New York Foundation for the Arts’ Gregory Millard Fellowship, and grants from ASCAP, BMI, American Music Center, MAP Fund, American Symphony Orchestra League, American Composers Forum, and the Canada Council for the Arts.  She is an associate composer of the Canadian Music Centre and currently serves as Vice Chair of the board of the American Composers Forum. 

Many distinguished artists and ensembles around the world have embraced Fung’s music as part of their core repertoire, including the Alabama Symphony, American Opera Projects, Chicago Sinfonietta, Milwaukee Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, San José Chamber Orchestra, Shanghai Quartet, Staatskapelle Karlsruhe, Suwon Chorale of South Korea, and Ying Quartet, to name a few. Fung’s Glimpses for prepared piano has been championed by a diverse group of pianists, including Conor Hanick, Jenny Lin, Margaret Leng Tan, and Bryan Wagorn. Conductors with whom she has collaborated include Long Yu, Justin Brown, Mei-Ann Chen, Andrew Cyr, Rei Hotoda, Barbara Day Turner, Alexander Mickelthwate, Peter Oundjian, Edwin Outwater, Steven Schick, Gerard Schwarz, and Bramwell Tovey.  

In 2012, Naxos Canadian Classics released a recording of Fung’s Violin Concerto [No.1], Piano Concerto “Dreamscapes,” and Glimpses. The Violin Concerto earned Fung the 2013 JUNO Award for “Classical Composition of the Year.”  Several of Fung’s other works have also been released commercially on the Telarc, Çedille, Innova, and Signpost labels. Her “Pot Roast a la RBG” is the most recent feature on the Çedille record label as part of the CD Notorious RBG in Song about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 

Passionate about fostering the talent of the next generation, Vivian Fung has started a new Creative Music workshop for members of the San Jose Youth Chamber Orchestra this fall. She mentored young composers this summer in programs at the American Composers Forum’s Next Notes, San Francisco Contemporary Chamber Players, and Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. She recently received an “Outstanding Career Influencer” Award from Santa Clara University, where she serves on the composition faculty.

Born in Edmonton, Canada, Fung began her composition studies with composer Violet Archer and received her doctorate from The Juilliard School in New York, where her mentors included David Diamond and Robert Beaser.  She currently lives in California with her husband Charles Boudreau, their son Julian, and their shiba inu Mulan. For more information, please visit www.vivianfung.net.

About the American String Quartet
Internationally recognized as one of the world's finest quartets, the American String Quartet has spent decades honing the luxurious sound for which it is famous. The Quartet will celebrate its 45th anniversary in 2019, and, in its years of touring, has performed in all fifty states and has appeared in the most important concert halls worldwide. The group’s presentations of the complete quartets of Beethoven, Schubert, Schoenberg, Barto´k, and Mozart have won widespread critical acclaim, and their MusicMasters Complete Mozart String Quartets, performed on a matched quartet set of instruments by Stradivarius, are widely considered to have set the standard for this repertoire.

The Quartet’s 2019-20 season features performances for Montreal’s LMMC with the New York Philharmonic’s principal violist Cynthia Phelps and for Northwestern University with the celebrated mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe, as well as a tour of Florida and a performance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of the festivities celebrating the Guarneri Quartet. 2018- 19 featured performances of the Quartet’s major project together with the National Book Award- winning author Phil Klay and the poet Tom Sleigh, which offers a groundbreaking program combining music and readings that examines the effects of war. The Quartet also collaborated with the renowned author Salman Rushdie in a work for narrator and quartet by the film composer Paul Cantelon built around Rushdie’s novel The Enchantress of Florence. These tremendously imaginative collaborations cement the American String Quartet’s reputation as one of the most adventurous and fearless string quartets performing today, as comfortable with the groundbreaking as with the traditional.

The Quartet's diverse activities have also included numerous international radio and television broadcasts, including a recent recording for the BBC; tours of Asia; and performances with the New York City Ballet, the Montreal Symphony, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Recent highlights include performances of an all-sextet program with Roberto and Andre`s Di´az, many tours of South America, and performances of the complete Beethoven cycle of string quartets at the Cervantes Festival in Mexico and the Tel Aviv Museum in Israel.

The American’s additional extensive discography can be heard on the Albany, CRI, MusicMasters, Musical Heritage Society, Nonesuch, and RCA labels. Most recently the group released Schubert's Echo, which pairs Schubert's monumental last quartet with works bearing its influence by Second Viennese masters Alban Berg and Anton Webern. This repertoire posits that the creative line from the First to the Second Viennese Schools is continuous – and evident when these works are heard in the context of each other.

As champions of new music, the American has given numerous premieres, including George Tsontakis’s 2015 Quartet No. 7.5, “Maverick,” Richard Danielpour's Quartet No. 4, and Curt Cacioppo's a distant voice calling. The premiere of Robert Sirota’s American Pilgrimage took place in September 2016, and will be performed around the U.S. in the cities the work celebrates. In January 2009 the Quartet premie`red Tobias Picker’s String Quartet No. 2 in New York City in celebration of the 90th anniversary of the Manhattan School of Music.

Formed when its original members were students at The Juilliard School, the American String Quartet’s career began with the group winning both the Coleman Competition and the Naumburg Award in the same year. Resident quartet at the Aspen Music Festival and School since 1974 and at the Manhattan School of Music in New York since 1984, the American has also served as resident quartet at the Taos School of Music, the Peabody Conservatory, and the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Learn more at www.americanstringquartet.com. 

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