High Tension: Contemporary String Series with Quatuor Bozzini

High Tension: Contemporary String Series

Performance: Thursday, March 10, 2011, at 8:00 p.m.

Quatuor Bozzini: Clemens Merkel (violin), Charles-Étienne Marchand (violin), Stéphanie Bozzini (viola), Isabelle Bozzini (cello)

Tickets: Series tickets $35 general; $30 member/students
Single performance $15 general; $10 member/students

Open Space presented the second concert in the High Tension Contemporary Strings Series, featuring Quatuor Bozzini. On Thursday, March 10, at 8:00 p.m., Clemens Merkel, Charles-Étienne Marchand, Stephanie Bozzini, and Isabelle Bozzini performed new, contemporary, experimental, and classical music.

Quatuor Bozzini (Montreal) presented the Canadian premiere of a new work by Christian Wolff, commissioned for the quartet by the MaerzMuzik festival, Berlin. The concert also featured Arbor Vitae, the final composition written by James Tenney, commissioned by the quartet. A strange and beautiful early work of John Cage was performed alongside a sister-composition of “distilled (sublimated) folk songs” from German composer Walter Zimmermann. These rarely performed masterworks revealled a thread of visionary thought of over 50 years.

Quatuor Bozzini has commissioned and premiered many works. Based in Montreal, they present the QB Series, Salon des compositeurs, and Composer’s Kitchen. It regularly tours in Europe and America and it hosts its own record label, the collection qb. Quatuor Bozzini has won three Opus prizes from the Conseil québécois de la musique (CQM): “International Outreach” (2007), “Contemporary Disc of the Year” (2004), and “Discovery of the Year” (2001). It is also the recipient of the Étoile-Galaxie Prize from Radio-Canada (2001), and the German Ernst Von Siemens Musikstiftung (2007).

While in Victoria Quatuor Bozzini led a composer’s masterclass for UVic students, as well as a performance of James Tenney’s In a Large Open Space in collaboration with LaSaM. The performance was on March 12, from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the Church of St. John the Divine, 1611 Quadra Street, Victoria, BC. Tickets were $10. For more details visit http://lasammusic.wordpress.com/