The Cassatt Quartet

 

Photo © Mary Ann Moy

 

Acclaimed as one of America's outstanding ensembles, the Cassatt String Quartet has performed throughout North America, Europe, and the Far East, with appearances at New York's Alice Tully Hall and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Tanglewood Music Theater, the Kennedy Center and Library of Congress in Washington, DC.  The Quartet is named for the celebrated American impressionist painter Mary Cassatt.

 

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 The Program

 

Andy Teirstein's work is inspired by the rich and diverse folk roots of modern culture. His music has been described by The New York Times and The Village Voice as "magical," "ingenious," and "superbly crafted." His newest release, on Naxos Records, Open Crossings, draws inspiration from Balkan, Appalachian and Jewish influences. His string quartet "Restless Nation" is a musical reflection on the home-schooling expedition Teirstein experienced with his family in 2008, when they traveled across the country in a pop-up camper. Projected photography by the composer provides a visual perspective on the journey, interspersed with subtitles, such as his 7-year-old son Max's comment while hiking through Bryce Canyon, "My eyes were hungry...and I didn't know it." The composer would like to dedicate this performance of "Restless Nation" to the memory of his dear father, Dr. Alvin S. Teirstein.

 

Gerald Cohen has earned distinction as a composer of both concert and liturgical music, and as a cantor and performer. Ken Smith (Gramophone Magazine) has said, "Cohen composes with a strong sense of tradition--one that embraces Brahms, Bartok and Britten on one hand and his own Jewish heritage on the other." Cohen composed Adonai Ro'I on the loss of a dear friend. Y'varech'cha is the blessing for children, composed "in joy at the birth of our son Daniel." The composer writes further, "This is a New York premiere of the arrangements of these songs with string quartet, and I am very pleased that it will be performed in this concert by the superb Cassatt String Quartet and your wonderful cantor, Marina Shemesh, who was a student of mine at the Jewish Theological Seminary."

 

The concert will end with Schubert's famous "Death and the Maiden" quartet. This dramatic work runs a relentless race through terror, pain and resignation. Theologian Frank Ruppert sees the quartet as a musical expression of Judaeo Christian religious myths, writing, "This quartet, like so many of Schubert's works, is a kind of para-liturgy.  Each movement is about a different episode in the mythic process of death and resurrection." 

                                 Composer Andy Teirstein

 

Upcoming : program on June 26, 2011 in Kiev. "Maramures: Viola

Concerto"  National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine

Conductor - Volodymyr Sirenko, soloist - Alexander Pogorelov (principal viola).  The piece is based on themes the composer  

collected in Roumania and Bulgaria in 1994.

Composition commissioned by the Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company: "Cercle d'Amour"  February 12, South Orange Performing Arts Center

Okanogan Valley Orchestra and Chorus.  Feb. 5th at the Omak Performing Arts Center in Washington State.  "Landscape Changing," a tenth anniversary concert.  The piece was originally commissioned as part of the American Composers Forum's "Continental Harmony" series, celebrating orchestras around the country at the turn of the millenium.   In addition to orchestra and chorus, it involves a Native American storyteller and Cowboy Poet.  

 

 

Andy Teirstein's newest CD, "Open Crossings," was recently released by Naxos Records International, the largest CD publisher in the classical music field.  

   

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Buy it at Naxos: Click here

 

Hear the Naxos podcast,  

"Open Crossings, the Music of Andy Teirstein:"  

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www.andyteirstein.com