“The Hunt” Quartet is one of the Six “Haydn” Quartets written by Mozart and dedicated to his cherished friend are the epitome of the classical style in chamber music writing. These superb performances are exquisitely recorded by the Alexander String Quartet at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, captured by multiple Grammy Award-winning producer Judith Sherman. The Homage collection is beautifully presented with comprehensive annotations from musicologist Eric Bromberger.

Listen to samples of our recording of this work:

Gary Gray studied clarinet with Robert McGinnis and Henry Gulick, and chamber music with Janos Starker at Indiana University, where he he obtained his Master’s degree in Woodwinds. He Also studied clarinet with Mitchell Lurie at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara. He was Assistant Principal in the St. Louis Symphony and later won first prize in the San Francisco Symphony Foundation competition. Mr. Gray was formerly Principal Clarinetist of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra for the past 20 years and is now Faculty Artist / Clarinet Professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. In March 2005, Gray received a promotion to Full Professor, advanced standing, from the UCLA Music Department, where he teaches clarinet and woodwind chamber music.

For many summers a Faculty Artist at the Aspen Music Festival, Mr. Gray is currently active in chamber music festivals in the U.S., England, France and Japan, and has performed with such artists as Itzhak Perlman, Mischa Dichter, James Levine, Brooks Smith, Milton Thomas and the Cleveland and Angeles Quartets. He has recorded both solo and chamber music for the Nonesuch, RCA, Laurel and Vox labels, and has given Master Classes at USC, San Francisco State College and the Royal College of Music, London, among others.

Mr. Gray was a founding member of the Pacific Serenades, now in it’s 23rd season and performed with them at Carnegie Hall in 1994. He has also concertized with the Tchaikovsky Trio in Belgium and at the Festival de Musique Française de Laon in France. The Francesco Trio invited Mr. Gray to perform at UC Berkeley in 1996. His concert on the Los Angeles County Art Museum’s Music Series in 1999 with Mark Kaplan/violin, Ronald Leonard/cello and Walter Ponce/piano included music of Beethoven, Ravel and Messiaen.

His concerto appearances include the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, The Aspen Chamber Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony and the Indianapolis Symphony, among others; and he has collaborated with Aaron Copland, Elliot Carter, Benjamin Britten, Ned Rorem, Malcolm Arnold, Pierre Boulez and Igor Stravinsky.

His album of solo concerti, recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1989 in the category of Best Soloist with Orchestra. This was only the second time in Grammy history that a clarinet album received such a nomination. The solo CD includes works of Copland, Rossini, Arnold and Lutoslawski. Mr. Gray’s album of clarinet/piano music, was recorded in London with Clifford Benson, and includes works of Debussy, Saint-Saens, Martinu, Bernstein, Poulenc and Arnold; both CDs are available on the Centaur label.

Ned Rorem’s Double Concerto for violin/clarinet title “Water Music” was recorded for BMG Records by Margaret Batjer, concertmaster of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and Mr. Gray in 1999. This CD, Brian Asawa – More Than a Day ~ Music of Ned Rorem, was conducted by LACO’s Music Director, Jeffrey Kahane, and was released in 2000. During the summer of 2000 Mr. Gray was invited to perform with Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon, where he shared the clarinet duties with its director, David Shifrin. His performance at the Sedona Chamber Music Festival in 2002 with the New Hollywood String Quartet has lead to concerts with them which took place in the fall of 2003.

Mr. Gray was invited to perform and give master classes at the West Coast Clarinet Congress in 2001, 2002 and 2003. He was also invited to perform and give master classes at the International Clarinet Association Conference in Salt Lake City in the summer of 2003. He gave master classes at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana in 2004, as well as performing with the Alexander String Quartet and teaching master classes at California State University Fresno as part of the International Chamber Music Workshop in 2005. Mr. Gray was asked to join the faculty of the Henry Mancini Summer Institute which took place at the University of California, Los Angeles from July 18 through August 14, 2005. In June of 2007 Mr. Gray again joined the Alexander String Quartet as resident faculity at the International Chamber Music program which was held in Florence, Italy.

Find out more about Gary at ClarinetByGray.com

Sunday Febrary 26, 2012 — 3:30pm
Fullerton Friends of Music
Sunny Hills Performing Arts Center
Sunny Hills High School
Fullerton, California
www.fullertonfriendsofmusic.com

Program:
Mozart Quartet in B-flat Major, KV 458, “Hunt”
Beethoven Quartet in F Minor, Op. 95, “Serioso”
Brahms Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, Op. 115 with clarinetist, Gary Gray

Cindy Cox — Photo by Kathleen Karn

Radical, traditional, original, archetypal, Cindy Cox (b.1961) derives her “post-tonal” musical language from acoustics, innovations in technology, harmonic resonance, and poetic allusion. Naturally unfolding through linked strands of association, timbral fluctuation, and cyclic temporal processes, her compositions synthesize old and new musical designs.

As Robert Carl notes in Fanfare, “Cox writes music that demonstrates an extremely refined and imaginative sense of instrumental color and texture…This is well-wrought, imaginative, and not easily classifiable music.” Her work, always engaged with novel approaches to sound and instrumental color, combines with formality “to yield great depth of meaning and a playful appeal” (NewMusicBox, American Music Center). In the San Francisco Chronicle, Joshua Kosman writes “as always with Cox’s work, there’s a layer of ingratiating charm that makes the music a delight to listen to”.

Cindy Cox’s music is noted for its special harmonies and textural colorations, such as the recently premiered Eco Ensemble piece Transfigurations of Grief and the piano trio la mar amarga. Many of her works play on themes of nature and natural landscapes, from her early orchestral Cathedral Spires (performed by Leonard Slatkin and the National Symphony) to her very recent Cañon (premiered by the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra). Her pieces also frequently make use of technology and interactive electronics, as in The Shape of the Shell for bass clarinettist Laura Carmichael, and Nature is for the Continental Trombone Quartet, both created at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) at UC Berkeley.

Cox is also very active as a pianist, with many of her compositions for solo piano. She has performed and recorded her Sylvan pieces, her Hierosgamos: Seven Studies in Harmony and Resonance, and The Blackbird whistling/Or just after. The newer texted works, such as Singing the lines (recently premiered by Lucy Shelton and the Berkeley Contemporary Chamber Players), The Other Side of the World (recorded by both Laurel Zucker and Nina Assimakopolous), and Hysteria (premiered and recorded by Abbie Conant) evolved through collaboration with her husband, poet John Campion.

She has received awards and commissions from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Fromm Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Composers Forum, ASCAP, Meet the Composer, and the Gemeinschaft der Kunstlerinnen und Kunstfreunde International Competition for Women Composers. She has been a Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, the Aspen Music Festival, the MacDowell Colony, and the Civitella Ranieri and William Walton Foundations in Italy.

Recent performances have taken place at the Festival di Musica Contemporanea at the American Academy in Rome (Four Studies of Light and Dark), the Festival Architecture et Musique in Angers, France (The Other Side of the World), the Kosmos Frauenraum in Vienna (Hysteria, filmed for Austrian National Television), Münster Gesellschaft für Neue Musik, the Bibliotecha National in Buenos Aires (Transfigurations of Grief), the Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn (Hierosgamos), the REDCAT/Cal Arts Theater in Los Angeles (Hysteria), Carnegie and Merkin Halls in New York City (Hierosgamos and The Blackbird whistling/Or just after), the National Gallery in Washington (Hierosgamos), the Library of Congress (Into the Wild), the Kennedy Center (Cathedral Spires), the Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella series (Primary Colors), and by notable ensembles such as the Kronos Quartet, the American Composers Orchestra, the National Symphony, the California Symphony, the Alexander Quartet, the Paul Dresher Ensemble, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Women’s Philharmonic, Composers’ Inc, the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, and the Earplay Ensemble.

A new full length recording, la mar amarga: music of Cindy Cox on the Albany Records label features the piano trio la mar amarga, the duo for amplified harpsichord and prepared piano Playing a round, and the large piano cycle Sylvan pieces (performed by the composer). She has two other complete CDs of her solo and chamber music, Columba aspexit on New World (formerly CRI) and Nature is on Albany Records. She is also recorded on Capstone, Arpa Viva, Inflorescence, Mark, and Valve-Heartz of Cologne labels. Her scores are published through World a Tuning Fork Press (www.worldatuningfork.com).

Cox earned her doctorate in 1992 from Indiana University, studying composition with Harvey Sollberger, Donald Erb, Eugene O’Brien, and John Eaton. She had additional studies with John Harbison at the Tanglewood Music Center, and Bernard Rands and Jacob Druckman at the Aspen Music Festival. As a pianist she studied with the famed Mozart and Schubert specialist Lili Kraus. Cindy Cox is presently a Professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and holds the Jerry and Evelyn Chambers Chair in music.

Find out more about Cindy on her website at CaCox.com!

Something remarkable about a decades-long romance with music of this kind of profundity is that one’s own life experience accretes to the fabric of human experience chronicled and contemplated in the original score. In January of 1991, the ASQ made a European tour, beginning in Switzerland and culminating in Amsterdam. In Geneva, we performed Beethoven’s first Rasoumovsky on the eve of Father Bush’s ‘Line in the Sand’ ultimatum. We followed with an encore of Samuel Barber’s Adagio offered as an “American” prayer for peace. The flurry of diplomatic efforts going on around us in Geneva were to no avail and the suspense we felt in the European capitals during the remainder of the tour was palpable. When the bombing finally began we were in Amsterdam preparing to perform our final concert before returning to the States. The concluding work on the program, which was to be recorded for a live concert CD, was (you guessed it!) the Schubert G Major.

I was completely unable to go to bed as we all watched CNN’s live coverage of the bombing of Baghdad, even knowing the exhausting day that awaited me. The contemporary drama was so compelling compared to the staid world of 19th century chamber music; I didn’t finally retire until nearly dawn. I don’t know whether it was the lack of sleep or the vivid images of modern warfare still flashing in my mind, but the Schubert quartet sounded and felt different in that concert performance than ever before. Far from being staid and antique, it felt intensely contemporary and relevant as if it had always been intended as a commentary on that moment of history. As I bowed lower and longer that night to give my back as good a stretch as possible, I felt somehow a participant in geopolitics, not only an onlooker. That sensation returned to me on Saturday as we brought Shubert’s masterpiece once again to life in sound. Never underestimate the power of great music.

Check out the brilliant use of the Shubert G Major in the movie “Crimes and Misdemeanors”. Director Woody Allen chose the perfect music to partner with this dark morality tale.

—Paul Yarbrough

Read previous blogs on the series from Paul and Sandy

Saturday, February 18 — 10:00am

Franz Schubert
San Francisco Performances Inc.
Herbst Theatre
San Francisco, California

http://sfperformances.org

Program:
ASQ with lecturer, Robert Greenberg
Schubert Quartet in G Major, D. 887, Op. posth. 161 (1826)

With Strings Attached

The Alexander String Quartet
San Francisco Choral Artists
Magen Solomon: San Francisco Choral Artists director
Lawrence Ferlinghetti: poet, speaker

Foghorn Classics: FCL-2006

Joyous, celebratory performances of exciting new works for chamber chorus and string quartet captured in superb recordings by Judith Sherman (Grammy-Winning 2011 Producer of the Year). This disc includes premieres from Michael Gandolfi, Stephen Leek, Paul Chihara, and Veronika Krausas. Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti chips in with readings from his poems, and three new transcriptions of Brahms favorites combine with Beethoven’s Elegaic Songs to present a memorable collection of stunningly beautiful music from these improbable combined forces. Upcoming performances throughout 2012 include stops in Philadelphia, New York, Clearwater, Memphis, Los Angeles, Fullerton, Asheville, Charlottesville, and Cleveland.

Program:
KRAUSAS: Language of the Birds • LEEK: Hollow Stone • BRAHMS (tr. Grafilo) • Four Songs, Op. 92 • Ballade, Op. 10, No. 2 & Intermezzo, Op. 118, No. 2 • BEETHOVEN: Elegiac Songs, Op. 118 • GANDOLFI: Winter Light • S. CHIHARA: Clair de lune

Purchase the CD via Allegro Classical!

In Friendship

The Alexander String Quartet
Joan Enric Lluna

Foghorn Classics: FCL-2007

Breathtaking performances by celebrated Spanish clarinetist Joan Enric Lluna and the ASQ! A glorious partnership spanning two decades is faithfully captured here by producer Judith Sherman. This superlative interpretation of Brahms (not the first recorded by these same five players) is matched with the stunning newly commissioned work for this quintet by heralded Valencian composer César Cano. This is a stunning tour de force composition matched to a “take no prisoners” virtuosic performance—it sets the heart racing!

CANO: Clarinet Quintet, Op. 74 • Veiled Proportions • Echos and Duels • Oblique Chants • Florid Pulse • BRAHMS: Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115

Purchase the CD via Allegro Classical!

Truly, we are loving the exquisite Patagón, which Cindy Cox has composed and dedicated to the ASQ for our 30th Anniversary. This is the 2nd fabulous quartet that we’ve done of Cindy’s and we can hardly wait to share this with our audiences. We’ll introduce the piece as a “work in progress” in Santa Rosa on February 24th and follow through with the première in SRJC’s “jewelbox” Newman Auditorium on April 13th. Like Jake’s work which we’ll record in October for AVIE, we plan to record Cindy’s new quartet too, to be released with a re-recording of her Columba Aspexit, on Foghorn Classics, where the ASQ records exclusively.

A last tidbit on the subject of new works for our anniversary in the pipeline, the ASQ will looks forward to planning the première of Robert Greenberg’s new Piano Quintet, a gift to the ASQ for our 30th, and for the very particular pianist, our great friend and frequent collaborator, Roger Woodward.

What riches!

Founded in 2004 by George Ellman and Al Fisk, the mission of the Sonoma Classical Music Society is to sponsor a series of classical music concerts of the highest professional quality. The society brings to Sonoma chamber music groups that may represent the unusual, such as Russian liturgical music and folk songs as well as the tried and true classics such as Beethoven’s Archduke Trio or any one of Mozart’s quartets.

Although most concerts are right in Sonoma, some of our concerts have been at local wineries during the summer, so people can relax with a glass of wine outside and enjoy, let’s say, a 17th century wind band. All in all if you like classical music, you will not want to miss the SCMS programs.

For tickets and more information visit SonomaClassical.org

Sunday, February 12th, 3pm concert

Vintage House
264 First Street East
Sonoma, CA 95476

http://www.sonomaclassical.org/

Program:
Haydn Quartet in C Major, Op. 76 No. 3, “Emperor”
Beethoven Quartet in F Minor, Op. 95, “Serioso”
Schubert Quartet in G Major, D. 887, Op. posth. 161

The Alexander String Quartet returns to Sonoma on Sunday, February 12, 2012, at Vintage House, 264 First Street East, Sonoma at 3:00 pm. Sponsored by the Sonoma Classical Music Society, the Quartet will perform three classic works of the quartet repertoire, by Haydn, Beethoven, and Schubert. Tickets for the concert are $25.00 for the general public, $20.00 for members of the Society, and $10.00 for students. Tickets may be obtained from the Society’s website, www.sonomaclassical.org, and will be available from Readers’ Books and Pharmaca approximately three weeks prior to the performance, and at the door.

Sunday, February 12th, 3pm concert

Vintage House
264 First Street East
Sonoma, CA 95476

http://www.sonomaclassical.org/

Program:
Haydn Quartet in C Major, Op. 76 No. 3, “Emperor”
Beethoven Quartet in F Minor, Op. 95, “Serioso”
Schubert Quartet in G Major, D. 887, Op. posth. 161

“The first half of the concert was equally affecting. It began with Heggie accompanying DiDonato in a superb account of Reynaldo Hahn’s song cycle “Venezia,” a witty and insinuating collection of bonbons, and continued with a strong-boned but tender rendition of Debussy’s String Quartet in G Minor. As an encore, all six performers joined forces for Richard Strauss’ “Morgen!” delivered with rapturous serenity.” — Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle (Full Review)

“As he has done for singers throughout his career, Heggie has made the cycle a glowing showcase for the vocalist. The writing for quartet — filled with insinuating themes and deft harmonies — sets the stage, but never intrudes. And the vocal parts are brilliant: spare and pristine in several settings, luxuriantly ornamented in others. This is a work that sings, ardently, melodically, and dramatically… Bridging the two song cycles was Debussy’s String Quartet in G Minor, in a lithe, agile performance by the Alexander String Quartet. The quartet, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, sounded especially lovely in the third movement (marked “Andantino doucement expressif”), with the strings producing richly colored, shimmering sound.” — Georgia Rowe, San Francisco Classical Voice (Full Review)

“After the intermission came the world premiere of Jake Heggie’s Camille Claudel: Into the Fire, for mezzo-soprano and string quartet. The music was pretty and often wistful. DiDonato enunciated clearly and was clearly moved by the songs. The fifth song, The Gossips, was, for this listener, most striking. The quartet played all together here, and the rhythms were attractive. The encore was Richard Strauss’ “Morgen!” with DiDonato accompanied by not only the string quartet, but by Heggie on piano again. — The Opera Tattler (Full Review)

“DiDonato was so mesmerizing to watch and hear all I really noticed was his ear-to-grin at the conclusion of each song. There’s a reason it’s recently been said she’s at the apex of her career and last night was evidence of it… Then the Alexanders came onstage to perform Debussy’s Sting Quartet in G minor…they managed to uncover new tones within the familiar territory and delivered an impressively thoughtful performance. Cellist Sandy Wilson brought the morose tone of the first movement to the forefront and it colored everything in its wake. Violist Paul Yarbrough picked up the thread from Wilson in the second movement, adding a quizzical element, and the violins of Zakarias Grafilo and Frederick Lifsitz performed the pizzicato ending with exceptional finesse…every movement was performed with its own distinct emotional current, with the players cognizant of the themes occurring in each, yet treating each one as a unique entity.” — John Marcher A Beast in A Jungle (Full Review)