Program:
Jessie Montegomery - Source Code
Yevginey Sharlat - RIPEFG
I.
II.
intermission
Sarang Kim - Two Hearts
I.
II.
Sergei Prokofiev - String Quartet no. 2 in F Major
1. Allegro sostenuto
2. Adagio
3. Allegro
Friction Quartet:
Otis Harriel, violin
Kevin Rogers, violin
Mitso Floor, viola
Doug Machiz, cello
Program Notes
The first sketches of Source Code began as transcriptions of various sources from African American artists prominent during the peak of the Civil Rights era in the United States. I experimented by re-interpreting gestures, sentences, and musical syntax (the bare bones of rhythm and inflection) by choreographer Alvin Ailey, poets Langston Hughes and Rita Dove, and the great jazz songstress Ella Fitzgerald into musical sentences and tone paintings. Ultimately, this exercise of listening, re-imagining, and transcribing led me back to the Black spiritual as a common musical source across all three genres. The spiritual is a significant part of the DNA of Black folk music, and subsequently most (arguably all) American pop music forms that have developed to the present day. This one-movement work is a kind of dirge, which centers on a melody based on syntax derived from Black spirituals. The melody is continuous and cycles through like a gene strand with which all other textures play.
— Jessie Montgomery
RIPEFG
I wrote my first string quartet in 2000 while studying composition at Curtis. It received its premiere in Curtis Hall (now known as Field Hall) – the world’s most intimidating concert stage. Some 16 years later, I was thrilled to receive a commission from my alma mater to write a new quartet (no. 3) for the formidable Aizuri Quartet, and a bit worried, knowing that its premiere in the same hall would constitute coming full circle, which must usually go with a bit of artistic self-examination.
Soon after starting work, I lost someone who meant a great deal to me – my former student at the University of Texas, fellow composer, dear friend, melodica virtuoso, maverick artist, and a real mensch Ethan Frederick Greene. His death paralyzed me for months, so I couldn’t write. Instead, I listened to his music. When I resumed work, it felt as though we had switched places, and Ethan was now my teacher looking over my shoulder, urging me to be more patient with musical material.
On the surface, there are two ways in which Ethan left a mark on this quartet: the monogram EFG that bookends the second movement and the use of melodica – an instrument Ethan insisted on bringing to our lessons. There may also be countless others, less conscious, buried deep in the score.
Beyond that, there is little else I can say about this music. I so wish Ethan could hear it; he would have known exactly what to say about it.
— Yevgeniy Sharlat
Two Hearts
I had two inspirations to the piece: my newborn baby girl and the Haegeum, Korean two-stringed fiddle. I found out that I would have a baby as I started working on the new piece. My first ultrasound showed me a small heart beating so fast, which made me realize that there are literally, physically two hearts in me. That's how I came up with the title. The process of making the whole structure of the piece came out of my very personal experience. I wanted to write a piece that tells the story of having and nurturing a new life. The first movement describes the fetus and her heart beating sound, irregular and weak yet. The second movement has two parts: fast, relentless figures portraying the journey of the fetus that tries to come out to the real world, and the slow ending which means that she made it. \
About the Korean fiddle, I thought that may be the right instrument to execute irregular, wide vibrato I needed. I myself tried to learn that instrument a few years ago. And it is inherently difficult for the Haegeum to make regular vibrato because of the high string tension; also, the two silk strings are vertically held and the bow is in between. I believed that Haegeum performers have developed such irregular and wide vibrato techniques, called '농현 (Nong-hyun in Korean); performers believe that technique truly creates Korean flavor in Korean traditional musical repertoires. I found myself interested in reinterpreting Nong-hyun and other Korean techniques through string quartet.
Other korean techniques include '추성 (Chu-seong: upward pitch bending to an indefinite pitch)', '퇴성 (Teo-seong: downward pitch bending to an indefinite pitch, idiomatically halfway between a minor third and a major third)', and the frequent alteration of vibrato and non-vibrato. I expected that string quartet would create interesting sounds with those techniques.
— Sarang Kim
String Quartet no. 2 in F Major
His sparkling second string quartet dates from 1941 when, due to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, a number of artists and intellectuals were relocated to Nalchik in Karbarda. Once there, Prokofiev and fellow composer Myaskovsky were exposed to field recordings and live performances of local folk music and encouraged to compose music based on this, thus far, unexploited exotic traditional source material. Prokofiev wrote, "I felt that the combination of new, untouched Oriental folklore with the most classical of classic forms, the string quartet, ought to produce interesting and unexpected results." Completed in just over one month, the second string quartet is precisely what he setout to achieve: a superb blend of vivid folk themes, textures and rhythms with the formal structure of a three-movement string quartet complete with sonata and rondo forms, a classical poise and Prokofiev's distinctively original sensibilities.
The first movement is a lively and rather taught sonata-form movement sporting three themes, a daring development section and a clear recapitulation. The first theme establishes a thrust of aggressive vitality with a bold, jaunty march on a Kabardinian folk theme that writer Melvin Berger describes as "combining childlike naiveté with menacing belligerence." The remarkable middle movement seems to do double-duty as both a haunting slow movement and a dance-infused scherzo, the latter erupting in the midst of the former. The beautiful slow-movement melody comes from a Kabardinian love song set in a hushed, almost impressionistic context perfumed with exotic "Orientalisims." The central scherzo section transforms the love song utilizing a kinetic motif from the folk dance "Islambey", a source of inspiration for other Russian composers going back to Balakirev. Recalling the bold, rustic momentum of the first movement, the finale springs from a regional mountain folk dance into which Prokofiev injects some of his signature agitation along with bright and piquant flavors and a sonata-rondo hybrid punctuated by solo cadenzas, development and recap in reverse order. Achieving an amalgam of authentic folk materials, skillful classical forms and the color swagger of personal originality, Prokofiev, on location, created a winning, modern string quartet.
-Program Notes by Kai Christiansen - https://www.earsense.org/
Bios
Friction Quartet, lauded for performances described as "terribly beautiful" (San Francisco Classical Voice), "stunningly passionate" (Calgary Herald), and "exquisitely skilled" (ZealNYC), is dedicated to modernizing the chamber music experience and expanding the string quartet repertoire. The quartet achieves its mission by commissioning cutting-edge composers, curating imaginative concert programs, collaborating with diverse artists, and engaging in interactive educational outreach.
Friction made their debut at Carnegie Hall in 2016 as participants in the Kronos Quartet Fifty for the Future Workshop. They returned in March of 2018 to perform George Crumb’s Black Angels as part of “The 60’s” festival and their performance was described as, “one of the truest and most moving things I’ve ever heard or seen.” (Zeal NYC)
Since forming in 2011, Friction has commissioned 43 works for string quartet and given world premiere performances of more than 80 works. They developed the Friction Commissioning Initiative in 2017 as a way to work together with their audience to fund specific commissions. The $14,000 raised to date has helped Friction commission a total of 12 new works, including six by young composers between the ages 16 and 21. They were awarded a 2019 Intermusic SF Musical Grant to develop a participatory educational program with composer Danny Clay that is designed to be accessible and sensory-friendly. The project is slated to premiere in the Fall of 2020 at the Pomeroy Recreation and Rehabilitation Center in San Francisco. Friction’s past grants include a grant from Chamber Music America that was used to commission a piano quintet from Andy Akiho, which debuted in November 2016, as well as project grants from Intermusic SF and Zellerbach Family Foundation supporting special projects involving the performance of commissioned works.
While Friction has garnered international attention as commissioners and interpreters of new music, they are also devoted to performing masterworks of the string quartet repertoire at the highest level. They won Second Prize in the 2016 Schoenfeld Competition, they were quarter-finalists in the 2015 Fischoff Competition and placed second at the 2015 Frances Walton Competition
Friction has held residencies at the New Music for Strings Festival in Denmark, Interlochen Arts Camp, Lunenburg Academy of Music in Nova Scotia, Napa Valley Performing Arts Center, Old First Concerts, San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music, and was the first ensemble in residence at the Center for New Music.
Friction Quartet is dedicated to building new audiences for contemporary music through interactive musical enrichment programs. They are participating for the third consecutive year in the San Francisco Symphony’s Adventures in Music program, visiting over 60 public schools annually. They are Ensemble Partners with Young Composers & Improvisors Workshop, workshopping and premiering new works written by young composers in the Bay Area. They have also given presentations at Oakland public schools through KDFC’s Playground Pop Up program. In collaboration with Meridian Hill Pictures, they created a short documentary, titled Friction, that profiles their early educational outreach in Washington DC’s Mundo Verde Public Charter School. Their presentations regularly utilize Doug’s adventurous arrangements of Pop songs alongside excerpts from standard string quartet repertoire to help young audiences build connections to musical concepts.
Friction appears on recordings with National Sawdust Tracks, Innova Records, Albany Records, Pinna Records, and many independent releases. They released their full-length debut album, resolve, in 2018 through Bandcamp. Friction has appeared on radio stations such as NPR, KALW, KING-FM, and KUT, among others.
Friction’s video of the second movement of First Quartet by John Adams was named the #2 video of the year in 2015 by Second Inversion. John Adams shared this video on his own homepage and called it “spectacular.” Their video for Andy Akiho’s In/ Exchange, featuring Friction and Akiho, was also chosen by Second Inversion for their Top 5 videos of 2016. The video was also featured on American Public Media’s Performance Today.
Friction Quartet takes risks to enlarge the audience’s understanding of what a string quartet can be using arrangements of pop music, digital processing, percussion, amplification, movement, and additional media. Their multimedia and interdisciplinary projects have received critical acclaim. In 2017 they produced Spaced Out, an evening-length suite of music about the cosmos that utilizes surround sound electronics and includes a Friction Commission written by Jon Kulpa. The San Francisco Classical Voice called it “accessible, yet surreal.” No matter where their musical exploration takes them, they never lose sight of the string quartet’s essence– the timeless and endlessly nuanced interaction of four analog voices.
Jessie Montgomery is a GRAMMY® Award-winning composer, violinist, and educator whose work interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness. Montgomery is an acute interpreter of 21st-century American sound and experience. Her profound works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful, and exploding with life,” (The Washington Post) and are performed regularly by leading orchestras, ensembles, and soloists around the world. In June 2024, Montgomery concluded a three-year appointment as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Mead Composer-in-Residence. She was named Performance Today’s 2025 Classical Woman of the Year.
Montgomery’s music contains a breadth of musical depictions of the human experience—from statements on social justice themes, to the Black diasporic experience and its foundation in American music, to wistful adorations and playful spontaneity—reflective of her deeply rooted experience as a classical violinist and child of the radical New York City cultural scene of the 1980s and 90s. In response to Montgomery’s GRAMMY®-winning work, Rounds (2021), San Francisco’s NPR station KQED stated: “this is what classical music needs in 2024.” A founding member of PUBLIQuartet and a former member of the Catalyst Quartet, Montgomery is a frequent and highly engaged collaborator with performing musicians, composers, choreographers, playwrights, poets, and visual artists alike.
At the heart of Montgomery’s work is a deep sense of community enrichment and a desire to create opportunities for young artists. During her tenure at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, she launched the Young Composers Initiative, which supports high school-aged youth in creating and presenting their works, including regular tutorials, reading sessions, and public performances. Her curatorial work engages a diverse community of concertgoers and aims to highlight the works of underrepresented composers in an effort to broaden audience experiences in classical music spaces.
Montgomery has been recognized with many prestigious awards and fellowships, including the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation, and Musical America’s 2023 Composer of the Year. Since 1999, she has been affiliated with the Sphinx Organization in a variety of roles, including Composer-in-Residence for the Sphinx Virtuosi, its professional touring ensemble. Montgomery holds degrees from The Juilliard School and New York University and is currently a doctoral candidate in music composition at Princeton University. She serves on the Composition and Music Technology faculty at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music.
For more information visit www.jessiemontgomery.com
Yevgeniy Sharlat has composed music for orchestra, chamber ensembles, solo, theater, dance, mechanical sculptures, animations, and film. He has written string quartets for Kronos, Aeolus, Aizuri and Amphion Quartets. Other chamber music has been played by the NOW Ensemble, Hub New Music, Seattle Chamber Players, Trio Séléné, Quodlibet Ensemble, Le Train Bleu, and many others. Orchestral music has been performed by Kremerata Baltica, Seattle Symphony, Hartford Symphony, Mikkeli City Orchestra (Finland), and Chamber Orchestra Kremlin.
He was among the composers commissioned by the Kronos Quartet for its “Fifty for the Future” project. His RIPEFG appeared on Aizuri Quartet’s Grammy-nominated album "Blueprinting" and was hailed as “startlingly compelling” by the San Diego Union-Tribune. A piano quartet, commissioned by Astral Artistic Services, was described as “one of the most compelling works to enter the chamber music literature in some time” by the Philadelphia Inquirer. He collaborated with prominent choreographers Lar Lubovitch, Donald Byrd, and C. Eule, as well as a renowned dancer Lil Buck. His arrangement of Chopin’s both piano concertos were performed by Kremerata Baltica with Daniil Trifonov as s oloist at Carnegie Hall in 2018.
Mr. Sharlat is a 2020 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow; other honors include the 2006 Charles Ives Fellowship from American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Fromm Music Foundation Commission (2010), fellowships from MacDowell and Yaddo, and ASCAP’s Morton Gould (2003), Boosey & Hawkes (1997), and Leiber & Stoller (1997) awards.
Born in Moscow, Russia, Mr. Sharlat came to the United States as a refugee at age 16. He studied composition at the Curtis Institute of Music (BM) and Yale University (MM, DMA). Since 2005, he has been on the composition faculty at The University of Texas at Austin.
Sarang Kim is a composer, pianist, and percussionist based in Seoul. In 2018, she graduated with a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz. As a young composer and multi-instrumentalist, she is studying how to make timbre creative and cross-cultural, exploring different ways of combining the East and the West. She writes works that incorporate elements of Korea, China, Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand. Her research focuses on how to use performance techniques to successfully integrate Eastern instruments, scales, tonality and musical aesthetics into Western avant-garde music.