{"id":1275,"date":"2018-04-23T14:26:52","date_gmt":"2018-04-23T18:26:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/?p=1275"},"modified":"2018-04-23T14:26:52","modified_gmt":"2018-04-23T18:26:52","slug":"brio-and-blossom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/2018\/04\/brio-and-blossom.html","title":{"rendered":"Brio and Blossom"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This week, the Cassatt String Quartet<\/strong><\/a> is having its annual Cassatt in the Basin<\/strong><\/a> residency, through which they bring the abiding principles of chamber music — effective communication, responsibility to the group, mutual respect, and intimate musical expression \u2013 to young people in West Texas.\u00a0 They began yesterday with a concert that included music by Melinda Wagner and Lev ‘Ljova Zhurbin.\u00a0 They will conclude on Thursday with a side-by-side concert featuring my triple quartet Brio<\/em>, performed with students from local high schools.<\/p>\n

Cassatt in the Basin commissioned Brio<\/em> ten years ago.\u00a0 That is, a triple quartet was commissioned, with the idea that Cassatt would play it alongside eight high school students.\u00a0 I had had several opportunities to work with Cassatt over the years, so I had plenty of experience with their capacities, but I didn\u2019t know what the level of the students would be.\u00a0 Creating a piece that would be suitable for their strengths, while also taking advantage of the Cassatt\u2019s skills was challenging, and I went back and forth with several ideas over several weeks.<\/p>\n

In the end, I wrote two pieces: Blossom<\/em> and Brio<\/em>, figuring I would choose one or the other when the time came.<\/p>\n

Then the time came, and I didn\u2019t know which to choose.\u00a0 So I sent both, and asked Cassatt to choose.<\/p>\n

True to typical quartet culture, two of them preferred Blossom<\/em> and two of them preferred Brio<\/em>.\u00a0 I guess we could call that a Texas Stand-Off.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t actually remember how that all turned out, but somehow they chose one of them and premiered it.\u00a0 The reason I don\u2019t remember is because I\u2019ve been fortunate enough to have them play both of them a few times over the subsequent years.\u00a0 This Thursday evening they are doing Brio<\/em> \u2013 at least that\u2019s what I think they will play \u2013 with students from Permian High School.\u00a0 Details here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week, the Cassatt String Quartet is having its annual Cassatt in the Basin residency, through which they bring the abiding principles of chamber music — effective communication, responsibility to the group, mutual respect, and intimate musical expression \u2013 to young people in West Texas.\u00a0 They began yesterday with a concert that included music by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1276,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1275","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1275"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1277,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1275\/revisions\/1277"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}