Ives Quartet - Press Release

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Tom Giuliano
www.ivesquartet.org

THE IVES STRING QUARTET
2002 Home Season Spring Series

Thomas Oboe Lee; Seven Jazz Studies
Franz Joseph Haydn; Quartet in C Major, Op. 20, No. 2
Benjamin Britten; Quartet No. 3

May 11 (San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose)- 2pm
May 18 (California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco)- 2pm
May 19 (First Congregational Church, Palo Alto)- 4pm

Palo Alto, CA – The Ives String Quartet opens its 2002 Home Season Spring Series with a performance of Thomas Oboe Lee, Seven Jazz Studies; Franz Joseph Haydn, Quartet in C Major Opus 20, No. 2 and Benjamin Britten, Quartet No. 3. Performances are Saturday, May 11, 2002, 2pm, the San Jose Museum of Art, 110 S. Market Street, San Jose; Saturday, May 18, 2002, 2pm, the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, Florence Gould Theater, Lincoln Park, San Francisco and Sunday, May 19, 2002, 4pm, First Congregational Church, 1985 Louis Blvd. Palo Alto.

Seven Jazz Studies by Thomas Oboe Lee consists of seven parts; the first, third and last, (the Prelude, Interlude and Postlude) are all quiet and meditative. The inner sections are pieces inspired by and in homage to four influential jazz artists. A Be-bop theme in the style of Horace Silver, a jazz waltz `a la Bill Evans, a bossa nova for Antonio Carlos Jobim and a variation of a Jaco Pastorius punk-funk groove.

Frank Joseph Haydn, Quartet in C Major Opus 20, No. 2 is one of six quartets created in a burst of productivity that occurred between 1770 and 1772. Haydn was then defining his symphonic style and its influence upon these quartets is reflected in the personal themes and motifs arching in longer and fuller lines the incorporation of national folk music, and in the wide variety of expression found in these works.

Benjamin Britten’s, Quartet No. 3 was completed a few months before the composer’s death in 1976. The style of the quartet is remarkably eclectic as Britten belonged to no “school” of composition. In this work he quotes from his own Death in Venice and uses a wide range of compositional devices drawn from earlier periods and even his own contemporaries.

The Ives Quartet has attracted international acclaim from New York to San Francisco, Taiwan to London. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, the ensemble has appeared at New York’s Alice Tully Hall, Princeton University, the Da Camera Society in Los Angeles, St. John’s Smith Square in London and at the Sedona Chamber Music Festival and Sonora Bach Festival. The Quartet has fashioned a sound highly praised for its unity, versalitility and supple beauty. Violinists Robin Sharp and Susan Freier, Scott Woolweaver, viola and Stephen Harrison, cello are members of the ensemble.