Performers
Mary Kothman, Violin
Lisa A. Williams, Violin
Nora Frisk, Viola
Elizabeth J Start, Cello
Program
She Rises
Caroline Shaw | Entr'acte
Elizabeth J Start † | Verdisimilitude
Elizabeth J Start † | Rising
Augusta Read Thomas † | Rhea Enchanted
Florence Price | String Quartet #2 in a minor
*World Premiere Performance
^ Midwest Premiere Performance
† Illinois-based Composer
Opening with Caroline Shaw’s Entr’act (2011) and closing with Florence Price’s recently published Quartet No. 2 in a minor (1935), this 75-minute concert also includes two works by Elizabeth J Start: her optimistically contemplative violin-cello duo “Rising” (2012) and her “Verdisimilitude” (1998), a tour-de-force of cello techniques that was premiered in Chicago by its dedicatee, Marc Johnson, in 1999. The program also includes Augusta Read Thomas’ “Rhea Enchanted” (2016) for solo cello.
The members of Rising are realizing a dream of performing in an all-female quartet and presenting a sampling of wide-ranging styles of music by women, from the complex harmonies mixed with music derived from Black idioms in one of Florence Price’s most adventurous and emotionally-charged works, to Caroline Shaw’s vision of a Haydn minuet and trio through “Alice’s looking glass”.
The quartet’s purpose is to raise up works by women composers and continue to rise themselves to more programmatic challenges and opportunities.
