BOZZINI QUARTET
Ana Sokolović (CA) – Commedia de’ll Arte
Commedia dell’arte, an inexhaustible source of characters, impressed me from my childhood. The characters, initially a theater of improvisation of the street in Italy, present truly the archetypes of the characters of every society in the world. Alive, funny, touching, ridiculous, exuberant, cunning or sarcastic, each character inspired one of the movements of my work. This cycle brings together three compositions for string quartet connected with the same theme. There is a possibility that other characters will be added in the future.
Cassandra Miller (CA) – Warblework
This piece has an unusual origin. Years ago, in order to leave my home on the west coast of Canada to study composition in Europe, I raised money for my travel by selling as-yet unwritten bars of music to everyone I’d ever met. The result was a huge commission from over sixty friends, family, and community members. In 2011, with the help of the Quatuor Bozzini, I finally made good on my promise and created the piece Warblework.
Each of Warblework ’s four movements (warble = chirp) is based on birdsong — in particular of four thrushes (Swainson’s thrush, hermit thrush, wood thrush, veery thrush) — whose songs follow the harmonic series. When this birdsong is slowed down, they reveal incredibly human-like melodies. These four movements therefore put forth a sort of poem of the regional sounds from the Pacific Coast and its forests. While the thrushes move through the harmonic series, a tune in slow motion reveals melodies accented in folk and old jazz standard traditions.
Jürg Frey (CH) – Kwartet smyczkowy nr 3
My music is silent architecture. It is like the silence of a room, a wall, a landscape, like locations or places, which remain silent. It is silent music but it is not absent music. It is not speechless/voiceless and it isn’t moving like a virtuoso around the limits of falling silent. The music doesn’t achieve its liveliness out of gestures or ornaments. Its quiet presence includes everything: colours, sentiments (sensations, emotions, feelings), shadows, durations. The music is silent sound, silent architecture.
This music has different emotional architectural sound spaces, Nuances and wasteland, lightness and heaviness of different materials, intimacy and forlornness appear and disappear. There are borders in between those states, which are gently crossed in order to arrive in the next room, the next ambience.
A hovering equilibrium between these arrivals and the proceeding is permeating the piece.
Performers:
Quatuor Bozzini has been an original voice and strong advocate in new, experimental and classical music since 1999.Driving the hyper-creative Montréal scene and beyond, the quartet cultivates an ethos of risk-taking, experimentation, and collaboration, venturing boldly off the beaten track. With a rigorous eye for quality, it has nurtured a rich and diverse repertoire, regardless of trends, and leading to a great number of commissions and some500 premiered works. Its open, collaborative, artist-led approach has resulted in the realization of numerous innovative and highly praised productions, including inter-disciplinary projects with video, theater and dance.
To ensure the continual development of the artform, Quatuor Bozzini’s musical ‘laboratories’, the Composers’ Kitchen, Performers’ Kitchen and Bozzini Lab, work to mentor and support new generations of composers and performers. The quartet runs its own recording label, Collection QB, and has released many critically acclaimed albums (including Junonomination 2020, German Record Critics’ Award) which have become reference recordings in the field. They have also issued albums with Wergo-Deutscher Musikrat, Edition Wandelweiser, Another Timbre, Hubro, ATMA Classique, and Centrediscs.
Praised by its “intense musicality and immense sensitivity” (Musicworks, Canada), Quatuor Bozzini was qualified in the Bandcamp Daily as “one of the most daring string quartets of the entire world.” Quatuor Bozzini is a self-managed organization, producing a concert series in Montréal and touring extensively in Canada, the USA, and Europe. Notable festivals and venues include MärzMusik Berlin (DE); Guildhall Barbican, Aldeburgh, Huddersfield (UK); Klangspuren Schwaz, Porgy&Bess (AT); Festival Présences, Festival Riverrun (FR); Angelica, SoundSCAPE (IT); Oslo Poesi (NO); Gaudeamus, Muziekgebouw, NovemberMusic (NL); Kortrijk (BE); Ostrava Days (CZ); SIPFEST (ID); Tsuda Hall (JP); TIMESPANS, Other Minds (USA). Juno Nominee in 2020 for their album Short Stories, Quatuor Bozzini was awarded the prix Opus — Performer of the Year by the Conseil québécois de la musique (CQM) in 2018. They were also finalist to the 28th Grand prix (Conseil des arts de Montréal, 2012), and recipient of three prix Opus “International Outreach” (2007), “Contemporary Disc of the Year” (2004), and “Discovery of the Year” (2001) as well as the Étoile-Galaxie Prize from Radio-Canada (2001), the Förderpreis Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung (2007), the German Record Critics’ Award for Arbor Vitae (2009) and the Friends of Canadian Music Award (2014)
