Marejada by Angélica Negrón
Quartet #21 in D Major, K. 575 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
1. Allegretto
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Allegretto
Aroma Foliado by Gabriela Ortiz
Quartet #21 in D Major, K. 575 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
1. Allegretto
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Allegretto
Aroma Foliado by Gabriela Ortiz
PERFORMED BY
Aaron Packard and Asher Wulfman, violins
Catherine Beeson, viola
Jordan Gunn, cello
Catherine Beeson, viola
Jordan Gunn, cello
About the Program
"Marejada", by Angélica Negrón
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About the Composer
Puerto Rican-born composer and multi-instrumentalist Angélica Negrón writes music for accordions, robotic instruments, toys, and electronics as well as for chamber ensembles, orchestras, choir, and film. Her music has been described as “wistfully idiosyncratic and contemplative” (WQXR/Q2) while The New York Times noted her “capacity to surprise.” Negrón has been commissioned by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Kronos Quartet, loadbang, MATA Festival, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Sō Percussion, the American Composers Orchestra, and the New York Botanical Garden, among others. She has composed numerous film scores, including Landfall (2020) and Memories of a Penitent Heart (2016), in collaboration with filmmaker Cecilia Aldarondo. She was the recipient of the 2022 Hermitage Greenfield Prize. Recent premieres include works for the Seattle Symphony, LA Philharmonic, NY Philharmonic Project 19 initiative and multiple performances at Big Ears Festival 2022. Negrón continues to perform and compose for film.
Read an interview with Negrón by NPR here.
About the Music
“Marejada” is a piece written for Kronos Quartet inspired by the pixelated landscapes of artist Justin Favela (pictured above) and the desire to escape to a place that feels and sounds like home. The piece combines field recordings from the waves in Seven Seas Beach in Fajardo, and birds from La Jungla Beach in Guánica, both located in Puerto Rico, along with undulating gestures in the strings reminiscent of the sound of waves.
I wanted to capture the feeling of joy and calmness I feel when I’m in Puerto Rico in these beautiful places while also expressing the complexity of the diaspora experience for those who like me cannot be physically present in those places and close to their friends and family most of the time.
When Kronos approached me in March 2020 to write a piece for them to rehearse and perform together during this difficult moment of social isolation, I wanted to create something playful and rhythmic yet flexible and malleable that would be fun to put together. Something that responded directly to the challenges during this time of performing music together while not being able to be together in the same room. But also, something that took into consideration the limitations of the video communications platforms and use those challenges as compositional material and creative impulse. The natural delay, the canceling of sound frequencies and the inability for everyone to fully play together at the same time and in perfect synchronization, are all challenges that I decided to embrace as unique
elements that make this piece thrive even within the limitations of the medium.
“Marejada” is an invitation to sonically escape from your room and to actively imagine and immerse yourself in a different place and time.
A typical performance lasts about 10 minutes.
Puerto Rican-born composer and multi-instrumentalist Angélica Negrón writes music for accordions, robotic instruments, toys, and electronics as well as for chamber ensembles, orchestras, choir, and film. Her music has been described as “wistfully idiosyncratic and contemplative” (WQXR/Q2) while The New York Times noted her “capacity to surprise.” Negrón has been commissioned by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Kronos Quartet, loadbang, MATA Festival, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Sō Percussion, the American Composers Orchestra, and the New York Botanical Garden, among others. She has composed numerous film scores, including Landfall (2020) and Memories of a Penitent Heart (2016), in collaboration with filmmaker Cecilia Aldarondo. She was the recipient of the 2022 Hermitage Greenfield Prize. Recent premieres include works for the Seattle Symphony, LA Philharmonic, NY Philharmonic Project 19 initiative and multiple performances at Big Ears Festival 2022. Negrón continues to perform and compose for film.
Read an interview with Negrón by NPR here.
About the Music
“Marejada” is a piece written for Kronos Quartet inspired by the pixelated landscapes of artist Justin Favela (pictured above) and the desire to escape to a place that feels and sounds like home. The piece combines field recordings from the waves in Seven Seas Beach in Fajardo, and birds from La Jungla Beach in Guánica, both located in Puerto Rico, along with undulating gestures in the strings reminiscent of the sound of waves.
I wanted to capture the feeling of joy and calmness I feel when I’m in Puerto Rico in these beautiful places while also expressing the complexity of the diaspora experience for those who like me cannot be physically present in those places and close to their friends and family most of the time.
When Kronos approached me in March 2020 to write a piece for them to rehearse and perform together during this difficult moment of social isolation, I wanted to create something playful and rhythmic yet flexible and malleable that would be fun to put together. Something that responded directly to the challenges during this time of performing music together while not being able to be together in the same room. But also, something that took into consideration the limitations of the video communications platforms and use those challenges as compositional material and creative impulse. The natural delay, the canceling of sound frequencies and the inability for everyone to fully play together at the same time and in perfect synchronization, are all challenges that I decided to embrace as unique
elements that make this piece thrive even within the limitations of the medium.
“Marejada” is an invitation to sonically escape from your room and to actively imagine and immerse yourself in a different place and time.
A typical performance lasts about 10 minutes.
String Quartet #21 "The Violet" in D major K. 575, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
About the Composer
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was an Austrian composer born in 1756 and died in 1791. He was just 35 years old when he died, but he got a pretty strong head start having famous composer violinist Leopold Mozart for a father, who also managed to open doors for him and get him situated as a child prodigy. "Wolfie" was writing some of his first symphonic works by the age of 10, and as many of you likely already know he became one of the most prolific and influential composers of the Classical era, writing more than 800 works for all types of ensembles. His music, according to historian Cliff Eisen, is known for “its melodic beauty, its formal elegance and its richness of harmony and texture”. Mozart, along with Franz Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, were the absolute rock star composers of the Classical era - roughly 1750 to 1820 - and all worked in Vienna overlapping their work and relationship to one another during the same period of time. These three, led by Haydn, pushed on by Mozart, and blasted into the future by Beethoven, formed what we now refer to as the First Viennese School of composition, basically templating the characteristics of the Classical era, laying the groundwork for innovations that would lead us into the Romantic era of the 1800s, and ultimately into the diverse and wondrous array of experimentation of the 1900s so that we can be here today celebrating the amazing variety of beauty and power in composed long form acoustic (mostly acoustic anyway!) music.
OR - AS FALCO PUTS IT:
He was a punk and lived in the big city
It was in Vienna, where he did everything
He had debts because he drank, but women all loved him anyway
He was a superstar, he was popular
He was exalted, because he had flair
He was a virtuoso, he was a rock idol
It was around 1780 in Vienna
No credit any more, the banks were against him
Everyone knew where the debts came from
He was a ladies' man, women loved his punk
He was a superstar, he was popular
He was too exalted, and that was his flair
He was a virtuoso, he was a rock idol
And everybody's still screaming…
”Come and rock me Amadeus!”
😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎
About the Music
The String Quartet No. 21 in D major K. 575, was composed in June 1789 just two years before Mozart died. It is nicknamed The Violet owing to the theme of the second movement Andante being taken from a song he had composed in 1785 with that title. It is part of a set of quartets written for, and dedicated to, the King of Prussia Friedrich Wilhelm II who was an amateur cellist. This quartet is composed in a similar style to the quartets of his contemporary Franz Joseph Haydn but shows inventiveness in harmony and form for the Classical era which is still novel today in the 21st century.
The piece is in four distinct sections, or movements:
Allegretto [medium quick]
Andante [walking pace, in this case on the slower side]
Menuetto: Allegretto [a dance like feel in a medium quick speed]
Allegretto [medium quick, in this case on the quicker side]
A typical performance lasts about 25 minutes.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was an Austrian composer born in 1756 and died in 1791. He was just 35 years old when he died, but he got a pretty strong head start having famous composer violinist Leopold Mozart for a father, who also managed to open doors for him and get him situated as a child prodigy. "Wolfie" was writing some of his first symphonic works by the age of 10, and as many of you likely already know he became one of the most prolific and influential composers of the Classical era, writing more than 800 works for all types of ensembles. His music, according to historian Cliff Eisen, is known for “its melodic beauty, its formal elegance and its richness of harmony and texture”. Mozart, along with Franz Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, were the absolute rock star composers of the Classical era - roughly 1750 to 1820 - and all worked in Vienna overlapping their work and relationship to one another during the same period of time. These three, led by Haydn, pushed on by Mozart, and blasted into the future by Beethoven, formed what we now refer to as the First Viennese School of composition, basically templating the characteristics of the Classical era, laying the groundwork for innovations that would lead us into the Romantic era of the 1800s, and ultimately into the diverse and wondrous array of experimentation of the 1900s so that we can be here today celebrating the amazing variety of beauty and power in composed long form acoustic (mostly acoustic anyway!) music.
OR - AS FALCO PUTS IT:
He was a punk and lived in the big city
It was in Vienna, where he did everything
He had debts because he drank, but women all loved him anyway
He was a superstar, he was popular
He was exalted, because he had flair
He was a virtuoso, he was a rock idol
It was around 1780 in Vienna
No credit any more, the banks were against him
Everyone knew where the debts came from
He was a ladies' man, women loved his punk
He was a superstar, he was popular
He was too exalted, and that was his flair
He was a virtuoso, he was a rock idol
And everybody's still screaming…
”Come and rock me Amadeus!”
😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎
About the Music
The String Quartet No. 21 in D major K. 575, was composed in June 1789 just two years before Mozart died. It is nicknamed The Violet owing to the theme of the second movement Andante being taken from a song he had composed in 1785 with that title. It is part of a set of quartets written for, and dedicated to, the King of Prussia Friedrich Wilhelm II who was an amateur cellist. This quartet is composed in a similar style to the quartets of his contemporary Franz Joseph Haydn but shows inventiveness in harmony and form for the Classical era which is still novel today in the 21st century.
The piece is in four distinct sections, or movements:
Allegretto [medium quick]
Andante [walking pace, in this case on the slower side]
Menuetto: Allegretto [a dance like feel in a medium quick speed]
Allegretto [medium quick, in this case on the quicker side]
A typical performance lasts about 25 minutes.
Aroma Foliado, by Gabriela Ortiz
About the Composer
Born to a musical family, Gabriela Ortiz has always felt she didn’t choose music—music chose her. Her parents were founding members of the group Los Folkloristas, a renowned music ensemble dedicated to performing Latin American folk music. Growing up in the cosmopolitan Mexico City, Ortiz’s music education was multifaceted. While playing charango and guitar with her parents’ group, she was also learning classical piano. Ortiz began her composition studies under the mentorship of renowned Mexican composers Mario Lavista, Julio Estrada, Federico Ibarra, and Daniel Catán. Later, she continued her studies in Europe, earning a doctorate in composition and electronic music from London’s City University under the guidance of Simon Emmerson.
Ortiz’s music incorporates seemingly disparate musical worlds, from traditional and popular idioms to avant-garde techniques and multimedia works. This is, perhaps, the most salient characteristic of her oeuvre: an ingenious merging of distinct sonic worlds. While Ortiz continues to draw inspiration from Mexican subjects, she is interested in composing music that speaks to international audiences.
Gustavo Dudamel, a longtime champion of Ortiz’s music, stated: “Gabriela is one of the most talented composers in the world—not only in Mexico, not only in our continent—in the world. Her ability to bring colors, to bring rhythm and harmonies that connect with you is something beautiful, something unique.” Under Dudamel’s direction, the Los Angeles Philharmonic commissioned and premiered seven works by Ortiz in recent years, including her ballet Revolución diamantina, the violin concerto Altar de Cuerda, and Kauyumari for orchestra. Dudamel introduced the piece Téenek (“one of the most brilliant I have ever directed”) to German audiences in 2023, performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker.
Ortiz’s music has been commissioned and performed by the New York Philharmonic, London Philharmonic Orchestra, National Orchestra of Bretagne, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra; Esa Pekka Salonen, Louis Langrée, and Carlos Miguel Prieto, among others. She has also collaborated with practically every orchestra, conductor, soloist, and ensemble in Mexico.
About the Music
In Gabriela Ortiz's words:
"Aroma Foliado was a Mainly Mozart commission underwritten by James R. and Frederica Rosenfield for the Cuarteto Latinoamericano and the La Jolla Summerfest. In the summer of 2005, I had the opportunity to see the work of North American visual artist Suzanne Bocanegra. I was especially intrigued by her work: All the Petals from Jan Brueghel the Elder’s Sense of Smell, 1618, 2002. As its title indicates, this work uses Jan Brueghel’s The Elder’s Sense of Smell as its source. In his painting, Brueghel presents us with a garden where a female figure is inhaling the fragrance of a large bouquet of flowers. Bocanegra captures the essence of the flowers through a series of painted petals; the number matching the number of visible petals on the Brueghel painting. Each one of the petals is tied with a black ribbon on white wall forming a floral map, with the final effect a series of textures of great expressive and visual force.
The interesting part of this work is the way in which an artist creates her work from the appropriation, interpretation or fragmentation of images of another artist to build new units, creating new languages in quite different environments. Undertaking the writing of a piece to celebrate Mozart’s 250th anniversary called for some decisions to be made, one of them whether or not to incorporate fragments of the Mozart pieces. But what was important was to have thoughts about the intersection points of his music with mine. That was the reason I decided to write my piece in a format very similar to a rondo, in which the musical language could flow with lightness and absolute freedom. So I used some fragments of the Mozart String Quartet No. 21 in D Major K. 575. These fragments link the sections, which are my memory, time and personal musical history.
The process used by Bocanegra inspired me and I used it like a platform for the reinterpretation and redevelopment of another artist’s material, but it gains its own life in my music without losing its essence. The main aspect is not the musical origin in itself, but how the new composition incorporates, develops and acquires new meanings and aesthetic values."
A typical performance lasts about 15 minutes.
Born to a musical family, Gabriela Ortiz has always felt she didn’t choose music—music chose her. Her parents were founding members of the group Los Folkloristas, a renowned music ensemble dedicated to performing Latin American folk music. Growing up in the cosmopolitan Mexico City, Ortiz’s music education was multifaceted. While playing charango and guitar with her parents’ group, she was also learning classical piano. Ortiz began her composition studies under the mentorship of renowned Mexican composers Mario Lavista, Julio Estrada, Federico Ibarra, and Daniel Catán. Later, she continued her studies in Europe, earning a doctorate in composition and electronic music from London’s City University under the guidance of Simon Emmerson.
Ortiz’s music incorporates seemingly disparate musical worlds, from traditional and popular idioms to avant-garde techniques and multimedia works. This is, perhaps, the most salient characteristic of her oeuvre: an ingenious merging of distinct sonic worlds. While Ortiz continues to draw inspiration from Mexican subjects, she is interested in composing music that speaks to international audiences.
Gustavo Dudamel, a longtime champion of Ortiz’s music, stated: “Gabriela is one of the most talented composers in the world—not only in Mexico, not only in our continent—in the world. Her ability to bring colors, to bring rhythm and harmonies that connect with you is something beautiful, something unique.” Under Dudamel’s direction, the Los Angeles Philharmonic commissioned and premiered seven works by Ortiz in recent years, including her ballet Revolución diamantina, the violin concerto Altar de Cuerda, and Kauyumari for orchestra. Dudamel introduced the piece Téenek (“one of the most brilliant I have ever directed”) to German audiences in 2023, performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker.
Ortiz’s music has been commissioned and performed by the New York Philharmonic, London Philharmonic Orchestra, National Orchestra of Bretagne, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra; Esa Pekka Salonen, Louis Langrée, and Carlos Miguel Prieto, among others. She has also collaborated with practically every orchestra, conductor, soloist, and ensemble in Mexico.
About the Music
In Gabriela Ortiz's words:
"Aroma Foliado was a Mainly Mozart commission underwritten by James R. and Frederica Rosenfield for the Cuarteto Latinoamericano and the La Jolla Summerfest. In the summer of 2005, I had the opportunity to see the work of North American visual artist Suzanne Bocanegra. I was especially intrigued by her work: All the Petals from Jan Brueghel the Elder’s Sense of Smell, 1618, 2002. As its title indicates, this work uses Jan Brueghel’s The Elder’s Sense of Smell as its source. In his painting, Brueghel presents us with a garden where a female figure is inhaling the fragrance of a large bouquet of flowers. Bocanegra captures the essence of the flowers through a series of painted petals; the number matching the number of visible petals on the Brueghel painting. Each one of the petals is tied with a black ribbon on white wall forming a floral map, with the final effect a series of textures of great expressive and visual force.
The interesting part of this work is the way in which an artist creates her work from the appropriation, interpretation or fragmentation of images of another artist to build new units, creating new languages in quite different environments. Undertaking the writing of a piece to celebrate Mozart’s 250th anniversary called for some decisions to be made, one of them whether or not to incorporate fragments of the Mozart pieces. But what was important was to have thoughts about the intersection points of his music with mine. That was the reason I decided to write my piece in a format very similar to a rondo, in which the musical language could flow with lightness and absolute freedom. So I used some fragments of the Mozart String Quartet No. 21 in D Major K. 575. These fragments link the sections, which are my memory, time and personal musical history.
The process used by Bocanegra inspired me and I used it like a platform for the reinterpretation and redevelopment of another artist’s material, but it gains its own life in my music without losing its essence. The main aspect is not the musical origin in itself, but how the new composition incorporates, develops and acquires new meanings and aesthetic values."
A typical performance lasts about 15 minutes.
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