Apple Hill String Quartet

Native American art comes to life in this program featuring The Ceremony That Never Was, a Hop commissioned premiere. Part of the quartet's year-long residency.

Winter 2023

Composer Dana Lyn takes inspiration from the painting series by the same name by Native American visual artist Rick Bartow, in the collection of the Hood Museum of Art. The evening's program also includes works by Raven Chacon, Aleksandra Vrebalov and Maurice Ravel.

Apple Hill's winter concert comes as part of their year-long residency at the Hop, a collaboration that aims to spread chamber music throughout the Upper Valley.

Called "dashing and extraordinary" by The Strad Magazine, the Apple Hill String Quartet are the Artistic Directors and resident musicians at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, winner of the CMAcclaim award from Chamber Music America. The Quartet serves as the Music Directors for Apple Hill's Summer Chamber Music Workshop in Nelson, New Hampshire, cultivating connection and understanding among people of diverse backgrounds, cultures, playing levels and ages through music performance and education centered around the values of acceptance, inclusivity, creative expression and encouragement.

The Quartet has collaborated with members of the Brentano String Quartet, Silk Road Ensemble, Dorian Wind Quintet, Hirsch-Pinkas Piano Duo, New York Philharmonic and Community MusicWorks in Providence, Rhode Island. Members of the Quartet have received degrees from Oberlin Conservatory, the Juilliard School, Peabody Conservatory, New England Conservatory of Music, Manhattan School of Music, SUNY Stonybrook and a Fulbright Fellowship to London, England.

Program

The Project

Hopkins Center for the Arts
at Dartmouth

presents

Apple Hill String Quartet

Elise Kuder, violin
Jesse MacDonald, violin
Mike Kelley, viola
Rupert Thompson, cello

Friday, January 27, 7:30 pm
Church of Christ • Dartmouth College • 2023

Generously supported by the Frank L. Harrington 1924 Fund No. 3, the Arthur J. 1903 and Nellie Z. Cohen Fund and the Nathan W. Pearson 1932 and Sons Fund.

Program
Approximate duration: 90 minutes including intermission

Pannonia Boundless: Aleksandra Vrebalov (1970–)

Double Weaving: Raven Chacon (1977–)
I. (sun sets)
II. (singing together)
III. (sun rising over the mountain)–(counter-clockwise around the fire)–
(running toward the sunrise)

The Ceremony That Never Was: Dana Lyn (1974–)
World premiere, Hopkins Center for the Arts commission
I. The Tale that the Crow Told
II. No Dogs at the Ceremony
III. The Dancers Arrive
IV. Acquiring a Taste for Crow

Intermission

String Quartet: Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
I. Allegro moderato
II. Assez vif, très rythmé
III. Très lent
IV. Vif et agité

Program Notes

Program Notes

Aleksandra Vrebalov
Pannonia Boundless

Serbian American composer Aleksandra Vrebalov was born on September 22, 1970. She wrote her string quartet Pannonia Boundless for the Kronos Quartet in 1998, who premiered the work later that year. Below is the composer’s own note for the piece.

Pannonia Boundless was commissioned by the Kronos Quartet in 1997. Always open to new experience and eager to explore a new artistic territory, Kronos asked me to do six minutes of virtuosic music that would be based on Gypsy tunes and would employ a specific playing technique of these nomadic musicians. After research in the Novi Sad radio archives and visits to Gypsy taverns in Vojvodina, I wrote this piece as an homage to those musicians who, from the margins of society as much as from well-known concert halls, have the power to touch our hearts. Pannonia Boundless was released in 2000 and used in the movie Soupirs d’ame by Canadian director Helen Doyle and in the ballet The Little Prince by choreographer Dusan Tynek. I wrote Pannonia Boundless in my grandmother’s house in the Serbian city of Sombor, the same house in which I had stayed during the NATO air raids in 1999. A neighbor had died as collateral damage. Today I learned that the piece was played by the best band in the world, the U.S. Marine Band, at their chamber music concert in Washington, D.C. Strange, beautiful life.
Aleksandra Vrebalov

Raven Chacon
Double Weaving

Raven Chacon (Diné) was born in 1977 in Fort Defiance on the Navajo Nation in Arizona. He wrote Double Weaving for the New York-based string quartet ETHEL in 2014, who premiered it that year at the Grand Canyon Music Festival.

In May of 2022, Raven Chacon (Diné) became the first Native American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, given for his Voiceless Mass for organ and large chamber ensemble. Though he is best known as a composer of chamber music, Chacon’s musical background is eclectic, with experience in Navajo and Pueblo song traditions, mariachi, heavy metal and noise music. Since the 1990s, Chacon has been a prime mover behind a thriving network of experimental Indigenous music and art collectives in the Southwest while simultaneously sustaining solo careers as a lo-fi DIY noise musician, provocative performance artist and designer of extreme large-scale land installations.

At first, the comparatively-subdued world of Chacon’s chamber music, with its small acoustic ensembles and its use of traditional notation, seems incongruous with the in-your-face extremes of his avant-garde performance practice. But even in works such as the miniature string quartet Double Weaving performed tonight, there are connections to a broader sensibility uniting his artistic output: a style rooted in Indigenous musical and political traditions that is expressed through abstract experimental technique but infused with an optimistic outlook and a preoccupation with beauty.

Though (as a rule) he never uses Native American melodies in music, Navajo song forms undergird the structure of his instrumental works, Chacon has stated, and the programmatic movement titles here (written like stage directions in the score) suggest the cathartic sequence of an all-night ceremony. Throughout, and particularly in the opening movement, extended bowing techniques, slippery glissandos and choppy dissonances reveal a shifting landscape of vividly varied color and texture. A sudden prayerful unison leads without pause into the second movement. Here, different combinations of the quartet’s instruments take turns interpreting a graphic score of cresting wave-patterns into a contemplative song. Briefest of all is the final movement, which sees a counter-clockwise procession below a coruscating sunrise, eventually leading to a reverent perfect octave to be played with eyes closed. Hastening, transformed, towards the dawn, the music fades as the second
violin hums a miniature version of the second movement’s song.
© 2023 Grant Cook ’19

Dana Lyn
The Ceremony That Never Was
World premiere, Hopkins Center for the Arts commission

Composer and fiddler Dana Lyn was born in 1974 in Los Angeles. Tonight is the world premiere of her Hop-commissioned quartet The Ceremony That Never Was, inspired by Wiyot painter Rick Bartow’s acrylic-on-panel series of the same name in the collection of the Hood Museum of Art.

Maurice Ravel
String Quartet

Maurice Ravel was born in Ciboure, Basses-Pyrénées, on March 7, 1875, and died on December 28, 1937, in Paris. He completed his String Quartet in April of 1903; the Heymann Quartet premiered it in March of the following year in Paris.

Maurice Ravel composed his only string quartet in 1902 and 1903, while he was a student at the Paris Conservatory. It follows a traditional four-movement form, yet so distinct was Ravel’s voice by his late twenties (he was 28 when he wrote the Quartet) that it could come from the pen of no other composer.

In its opening movement, Ravel wasted no time introducing his initial melodic material, a gently flowing violin melody played over rising scales. The movement’s second theme features a distinctive Ravel orchestration: violin and viola both playing the tune, but separated by two octaves.

The second movement is a brisk scherzo that alternates pizzicato and bowed passages, as well as conflicting, 3-against-2 rhythmic patterns, while the slow third movement rhapsodizes melodic material first heard in the opening movement.

In the finale, Ravel combines many of the characteristics that defined the previous movements: rich sonorities, rhythmic dissonance and idiomatic instrumental textures that push the technical demands of the music into the orbit of later quartets by Bartók and Shostakovich. The movement alternates meters in three and five, which helps generate an aura of energy
and excitement.
© Jonathan Blumhofer

About the Artists

About the Artists

Called “dashing and extraordinary” by The Strad Magazine, the Apple Hill String Quartet are the Artistic Directors and resident musicians at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, winner of the CMAcclaim award from Chamber Music America. The Quartet serves as the Music Directors for Apple Hill’s Summer Chamber Music Workshop in Nelson, New Hampshire, cultivating connection and understanding among people of diverse backgrounds, cultures, playing levels, and ages through music performance and education centered around the values of acceptance, inclusivity, creative expression, and encouragement.

During the regular concert season, the Quartet performs concerts and conducts residencies locally in NH, nationally in major U.S. cities, and internationally around the globe—in venues as diverse as the Curtis Institute of Music, Oberlin Conservatory, the University of Iowa String Quartet Residency Program, the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College, ChatterABQ, Burncoat High School in Worcester, Project STEP in Boston, Cedarcrest Center for Children with Disabilities in Keene, NH, the Ketermaya refugee camp outside Beirut, Lebanon, the Moscow Conservatory, the Conservatorio National de Musica in Lima, Peru, the Gitameit Music School in Yangon, Myanmar, and the General Store in Harrisville, NH.

The Quartet’s concert programs reflect the diversity of Apple Hill: pieces amplifying new voices, views, and backgrounds in classical music; compositions from places representing the Quartet’s global travels and the summer workshop community; and music from the historic canon and new commissions, especially from renowned alumni.

The Quartet has collaborated with members of the Brentano String Quartet, Silk Road Ensemble, Dorian Wind Quintet, Hirsch-Pinkas Piano Duo, New York Philharmonic, and Community MusicWorks in Providence, RI. Members of the Quartet have received degrees from Oberlin Conservatory, the Juilliard School, Peabody Conservatory, New England Conservatory of Music, Manhattan School of Music, SUNY Stonybrook, and a Fulbright Fellowship to London, England. For more information about the Quartet and the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, please see: www.applehill.org.

Called “first-rate” by the Boston Globe, Elise Kuder is the first violinist of the Apple Hill String Quartet and a Co-Artistic Director of the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music where she has been a resident musician since 1998. With Apple Hill, Elise has performed and taught in venues as diverse as the Curtis Institute of Music, Moscow Conservatory, Boston Conservatory at Berklee, Zipper Hall at the Colburn School in Los Angeles, the Institutes of Music in Damascus and Alleppo, Gitameit Music Institute in Burma, the Conservatorio Nacional de Musica in Lima, Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas, the Royal Irish Academy of Music, the Ketermaya refugee camp outside of Beirut and the General Store in Harrisville, New Hampshire. With the Apple Hill String Quartet, described as “dashing and extraordinary” by The Strad Magazine, recent studio recordings include a premiere of Dana Lyn’s Suite for Fiddler and String Quartet, a revival of Ahmed Adnan Saygun’s String Quartet No. 1, and transcriptions of Purcell Fantasias. Elise serves as a Music Director for Apple Hill’s Summer Chamber Music Workshop. Elise is a graduate of Oberlin Conservatory and The Juilliard School where she studied with Marilyn McDonald and Joel Smirnoff. She attended the Tanglewood Music Center where she won the Kohn Award for outstanding musicianship and served as concertmaster of the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra under conductors Robert Spano and Bernard Haitink. As a Fulbright Scholar, Elise studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, England with David Takeno. In her spare time away from Apple Hill, she has performed at the Alhambra Ballroom in Harlem with disco legends Patrick Adams, Black Ivory and Donna McGhee and teaches violin in the Monadnock region of New Hampshire. Her students have gone on to attend Walnut Hill School for the Arts and Boston Conservatory at Berklee, been selected as concertmaster of the Middle School Honors Performance Series at Carnegie Hall, participated in the New Hampshire All State Orchestra, and learned Bach’s Solo Sonatas and Partitas at the age of 82.

Joining the Apple Hill String Quartet in 2020, Jesse MacDonald has participated and placed in festivals and competitions in the Northwest and Northeast regions of the United States. He first attended Apple Hill’s Young Artist Fellowship Program in 2014 as violinist in the Tempest String Quartet, and again in the summers of 2016 and 2018 as the teaching assistant for violin. He previously performed with New York City’s Luminaria String Quartet and Boston’s Emma String Quartet in performances at NEC’s Jordan Hall, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Metropolitan Museum in New York City and throughout the New England area. He was also the lead fiddle player for the Broken String Band, a contra dance and swing band based out of Bozeman, Montana, for 10 years. He is currently a core member of Palaver Strings (Portland, Maine) and the Cape Cod Chamber Orchestra, and has played all over the East Coast with groups such as the Dessoff Choirs with Dr. Malcolm Merriweather, Bergen Symphony, Camerata New York, and with Off-Broadway theaters such as the Company Theatre in Norwell, Massachusetts , and the Seacoast Repertory Theater in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Jesse received his Bachelors degree at the New England Conservatory of Music, studying with Masuko Ushioda and Joanna Kurkowicz, and was awarded the Rachmael Weinstock Scholarship for Violin and Hugo Kortschak Award for Chamber Music from the Manhattan School of Music where he received his Masters degree, studying violin with Mark Steinberg.

Mike Kelley, Apple Hill String Quartet violist and Co-Artistic Director at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, graduated from The Walnut Hill School for the Arts and has received degrees from Oberlin Conservatory and The Juilliard School. His teachers have included Leonard Matczynski, Jeffrey Irvine and Karen Tuttle. A Primrose International Viola Competition finalist at the age of 18, Mike joined the resident ensemble of the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music three years later and has been performing and touring internationally with the group for over 20 years. He is the Music Director and Coordinator of Apple Hill’s Summer Chamber Music Workshop where he directs sessions, performs concerts and coaches chamber music throughout the summer in New Hampshire. An active composer, Mike has been a Teaching Fellow in Electronic Music at Juilliard, and a guest lecturer at Harvard on the subject of electronic dance music. Under a pop-disco alias, he has performed worldwide in clubs such as Webster Hall (NYC), the O2 (London), and Berghain (Berlin), and has written and produced music for many pop acts, including Metro Area, Caribou, Madonnaand Pharrell. His albums have been selected for the “best of the decade” lists of music magazines Stylus and Fact, and have been highly recommended by Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork and the Guardian.

Rupert Thompson, cellist with the Apple Hill String Quartet and Co-Artistic Director at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, has been a resident member of Apple Hill since 1997. Making his solo debut with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at the age of 18, Rupert has studied with Mihaly Virizlay and Timothy Eddy. Holding degrees from the Peabody Institute (BM) in Baltimore MD and SUNY Stony Brook of New York (MM and DMA), Rupert has received a career grant from the Concert Artist Guild, as well as the C.D. Jackson Memorial Award of Merit from the Tanglewood Music Center. Live radio broadcasts of his solo engagements include WFMT of Chicago and WQXR in New York City. In addition to his active Apple Hill concert and teaching schedule with such notable institutions as the Moscow Conservatory, Williams College, the Curtis Institute, Dartmouth College, UCLA, the Yerevan State Conservatory and the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, Rupert is also a photographer, a screen writer, and served as film composer for the award-winning movie Sensation of Sight which featured Oscar-nominated actor David Strathairn.

Apple Hill is supported in part by grants from the U.S. Small Business Administration, New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, Cheshire County of New Hampshire, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Connecting Artists to the Community

Connecting Artists to the Community

This concert is part of Apple Hill’s year-long residency at the Hop. During the winter term, they will also participate in a public talk entitled Social Entrepreneurship and the Arts alongside composer Dana Lyn, in a collaboration with the Hood Museum and Magnuson Center as part of Arts Careers Week. They will also engage with Dartmouth students and faculty through class visits in the Music Department and a dinner with the East Wheelock House community.

“Dashing and extraordinary”
The Strad Magazine

Apple Hill String Quartet

Apple Hill at the Hop Known for their commitment to diversity, the New Hampshire-based quartet injects every program with new voices, views and backgrounds. They are also a strong testament to our...

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