SKU: FG.55011-510-1

ISBN 9790550115101.

Matthew Whittall's preface to Bright Ferment (2019): I have a complicated history with the string quartet. Actually, it's not that complicated. I spent months writing a huge one in my early twenties and hastily withdrew it after a long delayed premiere, vowing never to write another. In a typical case of karmic retribution, my fear of the form would eventually be overcome by the unrefusable offer to write the compulsory piece for the Banff International String Quartet Competition in my native Canada. The short duration requested, about nine minutes, also felt like a good way to wade gingerly back into the medium. The title was originally just a nice-sounding pair of words that surfaced in a brainstorming session with fellow composer Alex Freeman over an injudicious amount of fermented barley. When I looked it up later, I found that it was a phrase of older coinage, seemingly used more for poetic resonance than any fixed meaning. Ferment by itself denotes a state of confusion, change or lack of order. With bright, it takes on a more positive connotation with regard to society and creativity: a wild profusion of ideas barely checked by reason. (It may not actually mean that, but it describes this piece nicely, so let's go with it.) Fermentation in its trendy culinary usage is also hinted at via a recurrent percolating device of scattered pizzicati. As one may guess from the tone of this introduction, there is little attempt at gravity in Bright Ferment, the only means by which I felt I could sidestep the historical and expressive weight of the string quartet genre. Styles, gestures and moods are tossed around, cross-cut and abandoned in stream-of-consciousness fashion, connected by little except an intuitive sense of rightness in their juxtaposition. If the piece acquires depth in spite of me, it will only be because its disparate parts amplify and strengthen each other simply by being together - much like the ensemble itself. Bright Ferment was commissioned by the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, with additional funding from the Americas Society (New York), for the 2019 Banff International String Quartet Competition. Duration: ca. 9 minutes.

SKU: HL.14042812

8.5x11.75x0.166 inches.

Commissioned by Kronos Quartet for the Celebrate Brooklyn Festival. Premiere 12th March 2009 at the MusicNOW Festival and 18th July 2009 in Prospect Park, Brooklyn.

Bryce Dessner is a composer/guitarist/curator based in NewYork City. He has received widespread acclaim as a composer and guitarist for the improvising new music quartet, Clogs. Bryce has performed and/or recorded with some of the world's most creative musicians including songwritersSufjan Stevens, Bon Iver, and Antony Hegarty, Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo, composers Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Nico Muhly and Michael Gordon, the contemporary ensembles, Kronos Quartet, the Bang on a Can All-Stars andvisual artist Matthew Ritchie. .

SKU: FG.55011-853-9

Lara Poe's (b. 1993) energetic Divergence (2015-2016) for string quartet was conceived cyclically: the four movements explore drifting in and out of focus between different materials. A light ditty of the second movement diverges to the third movement's overtone derived chords.

Duration: c. 25'

This product includes a set of parts (violin I, violin II, viola, violoncello) and a score.

Lara Poe is a Finnish-American composer who is currently based in London. Her works have been performed across a wide range of venues throughout the US, Europe, and Asia. Her piece Kaamos, which she wrote for the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, was recently nominated for a Ivors Composer Award in the Large Scale Composition category. Kaamos also was selected by YLE Radio Finland to represent Finland at the International Rostrum of Composers 2021 in Belgrade, Serbia. Poe was the 2019 Tanglewood Music Patricia Plum Wilde Fellow and represented Finland at Ung Nordisk Musik 2019 in Piteå. She was also a 2018-2019 participant in the London Symphony Orchestra's Panufnik Scheme, where she worked under the guidance of Colin Matthews and Christian Mason.