Music Round The Nook will current two live shows of chamber music on December 28 and 29 to brighten the between-the-holidays weekend. String quartets by Debussy, Canadian organist/composer Rachel Laurin and rising composer Nicky Sohn are on this system.
A quartet of musicians will carry out in intimate settings that embody a fundraiser for the Glad Day Bookstore, and Blood Brothers Brewing, a craft microbrewery.
The Program
- Nicky Sohn: Three Questions That Started with a Small Flame
- Rachel Laurin: Deux Noëls for String Quartet
- Claude Debussy: String Quartet in G minor
Houston, TX primarily based composer Nicky Sohn is understood for a mode that blends components of jazz into the classical music combine. Her influences embody Esa-Pekka Salonen, Chet Baker, and various dwelling composers in between.
Her work, which consists of solo, chamber and orchestral items, has been carried out to rave evaluations in Asia, Europe and throughout the US. Her commissions embody works composed for the Stuttgart Ballet, Nationwide Orchestra of Korea, St. Louis Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, and New York Choreographic Institute, amongst others. With a Grasp of Music Diploma from the Juilliard Faculty, Nicky is working in direction of her doctoral diploma at The Shepherd Faculty of Music at Rice College.
Rachel Laurin (1961 – 2023) was referred to as an organist, composer, and music educator. A local of Saint-Benoît, Québec (now a part of Mirabel), she studied the organ on the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal, and would go on to a profession an as worldwide performer, alongside along with her duties because the principal organist on the Notre Dame Cathedral in Ottawa.
She started finding out composition as a young person, and have become home composer at Wayne Leupold Editions from 2006, though she ultimately composed works by fee solely. Her work gained a number of awards, together with the Holtkamp-AGO Composition Award in 2008, and the Distinguished Composer Award from the American Guild of Organists in 2020.
Her legacy contains works of chamber and orchestral music, together with many items for solo organ.
Op. 10 (L.91) is Debussy’s solely string quartet, composed in 1893 on the age of 31. He’d deliberate on writing two string quartets, and dedicating a minimum of the primary to fellow composer Ernest Chausson, however each plans have been scuttled, and we’re left with just one.
It premiered on December 29, 1893 as carried out by the Ysaÿe Quartet, (he devoted the piece to them), and the Parisian viewers was mentioned to have combined reactions. It was extremely trendy in fashion for the period. Typical of his fashion, it’s impressionistic and sensual in its strategy, utilizing recurring themes all through. It’s a piece that begins one of many extra productive phases of his life as a composer. He’d go on to develop his signature soundscape later that decade in works just like the Bergamesque Suite.
Maurice Ravel would write his personal string quartet impressed by Debussy’s. It was a splash of modernism in a discipline that had been dominated by extra conventional voices.
The Performers
Music Across the Nook is a live performance sequence based by violinist Emma Meinrenken and violist Lynn Sue-A-Quan in 2023, that includes Toronto-born and primarily based classical musicians. Together with showcasing each conventional and up to date classical repertoire, together with Canadian composers and arrangers, their mandate contains turning a highlight on Toronto companies and venues.
Emma Meinrenken, Violinist, Co-Director
Emma Meinrenken is presently pursuing her Grasp of Musical Arts at Yale College with Augustin Hadelich. She earned a BMus from the Curtis Institute, and gained Yale’s Presser Basis Graduate Music Award. Her worldwide competitors wins embody 1st place on the Stradivarius Worldwide Violin Competitors and the Prix Ravel on the Ecole d’Artwork Américaines de Fontainebleau.
Emma has carried out in Canada and all through Europe, and made her Carnegie Corridor debut premiering a bit by Fred Lerdahl. She is a college member for the Music Niagara Competition’s efficiency academy. Emma performs on the 1717 Windsor-Weinstein Stradivarius, on mortgage from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Lynn Sue-a-Quan, Violist, Co-Director
Violist Lynn Sue-A-Quan earned each a bachelor’s and grasp’s levels at The Juilliard Faculty. She is presently a member of the Jacksonville Symphony. She has additionally carried out with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic, and has carried out as a soloist with orchestras throughout North America, and at festivals in North America and Europe.
She is a devoted music educator, and a recipient of the Morse Instructing Artists Fellowship at Juilliard, an award that allowed her to show college students in public faculties in New York Metropolis.
Astrid Nakamura, Violinist
Astrid Nakamura accomplished her undergraduate diploma at McGill College, adopted by a grasp’s at Rice College. She is a busy chamber, solo and orchestral musician, and has carried out with ensembles and orchestras throughout North America, together with the Houston Symphony, Montreal Symphony, Musiqa Houston, Kinetic Ensemble and Ensemble Urbain, amongst others.
Competitors wins embody third place on the 2024 Eckhardt-Gramatté Competitors, second within the 2022 Golden Violin Competitors at McGill College, and first on the 2021 McGill Concerto Competitors. She performs on the c.1830-1850 ‘Eckhardt-Gramatte’ Chanot I violin, on mortgage from the Canada Council for the Arts Musical Instrument Financial institution.
Astrid is dedicated to outreach, together with instructing at public elementary faculties, and live shows in partnership with the MD Anderson Most cancers Heart, and the College of Houston BRAIN Heart.
Matthew Christakos, Cellist
Matthew Christakos was appointed as the brand new Affiliate Principal Cello of the New York Philharmonic in January 2024. He gained the 2019 Canada Council for the Arts’s Michael Measures Prize, and was named on CBC Music’s 30 Sizzling Canadian Classical Musicians Underneath 30 record the identical 12 months. He’s the previous principal cello of the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra.
Matthew started enjoying the cello on the age of 4. After starting his formal research on the Royal Conservatory of Music’s Phil and Eli Taylor Efficiency Academy for Younger Artists, the place he gained the concerto competitors and was a featured soloist with the Academy Chamber Orchestra, he went on to review on the Curtis Institute of Music earlier than launching his skilled profession.
The Venues
On December 28, the quartet might be performing on the Glad Day Bookstore, the world’s oldest LGBT bookstore. Based in 1970, it’s a welcoming area. The live performance is hoped to spice up their fundraising efforts (particulars right here).
On December 29, the quartet performs at Blood Brothers Brewing, a craft microbrewery within the west finish of town, newly outfitted with a efficiency stage and upgraded sound techniques (together with beer flights to pair with each bit).
- Discover tickets and particulars concerning the December 28 live performance [HERE], and the December 29 live performance [HERE].
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Anya Wassenberg is a Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. She is an skilled freelance author, blogger and writing teacher.
