May 5: Red Bank Chamber Music Society Presents the American String Quartet in World Premiere of Vivian Fung String Quartet

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

Red Bank Chamber Music Society Presents the American String Quartet
in World Premiere String Quartet by Vivian Fung, May 5

“one of today’s most eclectic composers” – NPR

“A quartet engraved in eternity.”— DIE ZEIT

www.vivianfung.ca | www.americanstringquartet.com

Red Bank, NJ (April 11, 2019) — On Sunday, May 5, 2019 at 4:30pm, the Red Bank Chamber Music Society presents the American String Quartet in the world premiere of JUNO Award-winning Canadian composer Vivian Fung’s String Quartet No. 4 “Insects and Machines.” The program also includes Beethoven’s Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 74, “Harp” and Brahms’s String Quintet in G major, Op. 111 featuring one of the American String Quartet’s top students from the Manhattan School of Music.

Vivian Fung’s String Quartet No. 4 “Insects and Machines,” commissioned by Red Bank Chamber Music Society, 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.”

Performance Information
Red Bank Chamber Music Society Presents the American String Quartet
Sunday, May 5, 2019 at 4:30pm
Trinity Church Auditorium | 50 White Street | Red Bank, NJ
Tickets: Free with advanced reservation to http://www.rbcms.org/contact
More Information: http://www.rbcms.org/events/2019/5/5/american-string-quartet

Program:
Vivian Fung: String Quartet No. 4 “Insects and Machines” (World Premiere, Commissioned by the Red Bank Chamber Music Society)
Beethoven: Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 74, “Harp”
Brahms: String Quintet in G major, Op. 111

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. Her work often assimilates disparate influences such as non-Western folk music, Brazilian rhythms, and visual inspirations.

Highlights of Vivian Fung’s 2018-2019 season include new orchestral works commissioned by the Winnipeg New Music Festival and the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra and a new string quartet commissioned by the Red Bank Chamber Music Society. During the 2017-18 season, Fung’s Humanoid for solo cello and electronics premiered in New Orleans and tours to Vancouver, New York, Philadelphia, Toronto, and the Bay Area. The San José Chamber Orchestra recently premiered her Baroque Melting, and the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra gave the Canadian premiere in April 2018. Fung’s Clarinet Quintet: Frenetic Memories, performed by clarinetist Romie de Guise-Langlois and the Daedalus Quartet, premiered at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Philadelphia Chamber Music Society to critical acclaim. Recent commissions also included Earworms for Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra premiered in March 2018; a new solo percussion work The Ice Is Talking (For 3 Ice Blocks) for internationally renowned percussionist Aiyun Huang, commissioned by the Banff Centre and premiered in July 2018; and a new piano quartet, Shifting Landscapes, for Ensemble Made in Canada’s Mosaïque Project.

Highlights of Fung’s numerous recent high-profile projects include her Violin Concerto No. 2, commissioned and premiered in 2015 by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and violinist Jonathan Crow; and Biennale Snapshots, an orchestral work which opened the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s 2015-16 season. Many distinguished artists and ensembles around the world have embraced Fung’s music as part of the core repertoire, including the Winnipeg New Music Festival, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Milwaukee Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Staatskapelle Karlsruhe, Suwon Chorale of South Korea, Metropolis Ensemble, and American String Quartet, to name a few.

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.

Fung’s awards and grants include the 2015 Jan V. Matejcek New Classical Music Award for achievement in new music from 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.

Born in Edmonton, Canada, Fung received her doctorate from The Juilliard School in New York. She currently lives in California with her husband Charles Boudreau, their son Julian, and their shiba inu Mulan, and is on the faculty of Santa Clara University. 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 2018-19 season features additional performances of their 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 on people, their hearts, and their minds. The Quartet will also collaborate again 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 projects 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 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.

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