Dec 9: Emerald City Music Presents The Telegraph Quartet

Emerald City Music Presents The Telegraph Quartet

Performing Music by Florence Price,

Grażyna Bacewicz, and Maurice Ravel

Violinist Kristin Lee, Artistic Director

Photo by Lisa Marie Mazzucco

Friday, December 9, 2022 at 8pm 415 Westlake 415 Westlake Avenue N | Seattle, WA

Saturday, December 10, 2022 at 7:30pm Good Shepherd Lutheran Church 1601 North Street SE | Olympia, WA

Tickets and Information: www.emeraldcitymusic.org/season/quartet-in-spotlight-telegraph-quartet-seattle www.emeraldcitymusic.org/season/quartet-in-spotlight-telegraph-quartet-olympia

“[Emerald City Music is] providing what artistic director Kristin Lee calls a ‘Friday date-night vibe’,”– The Seattle Times “Telegraph Quartet’s rhythmic acuity, rapid tempos and intense lyricism is stunning.” – Audiophile Audition

www.emeraldcitymusic.org

Seattle & Olympia, WA – On Friday, December 9, 2022 at 8pm in Seattle at 415 Westlake (415 Westlake Avenue N) and Saturday, December 10, 2022 at 7:30pm in Olympia at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church (1601 North Street SE), Emerald City Music (ECM) presents Telegraph Quartet. The award-winning, San Francisco based group brings lively musicality and an energetic stage presence to Emerald City Music, showcased through a variety of works written in the first half of the 20th century.

Emerald City Music shines the spotlight on the award-winning Telegraph Quartet with two concerts featuring three vigorous string quartets: Florence Price’s Five Folksongs in Counterpoint, Grażyna Bacewicz’s String Quartet No. 4, and Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major. For the performance at 415 Westlake, audiences can enjoy ECM’s flagship “date-night experience,” which combines vibrant classical performance with an open bar, and a “wander-around” concert setting with no stage dividing the audience from the musicians. The second performance of the program in Olympia will be held at the intimate and acoustically resonant Good Shepherd Lutheran Church.

Of the historical context behind each string quartet, Telegraph Quartet says: “All three works on this program are bursting at the seams with brilliance and vigor. Florence Price’s Five Folksongs in Counterpoint – written in the 1920s but only rediscovered in 2009 – is a powerful rendering of five popular African-American spirituals and folk songs, in which Price creates an intricate reimagining of the original. Grażyna Bacewicz composed her fourth quartet several years after the end of World War II, during which time she lived through the Nazi occupation of Warsaw. The work opens with a kind of sorrow-tinged hope that builds to a joyous, Tchaikovsky-esque third movement. In his first and only string quartet, Maurice Ravel showcases the luminosity of his unique color palette, joyfully playing with aural color as vividly as any visual artist of his time.”

Emerald City Music (ECM) is the Pacific Northwest home for eclectic, intimate, and vibrant classical chamber music experiences. Known for their casual environment combined with award winning artists, ECM has gained recognition from several high-profile publications like Seattle Times, The City Arts deemed ECM "the beacon for the casual-classical movement". Unique to only ECM attendees are encouraged to wear casual clothes, enjoy the open bar and walk around in order to increase the satisfaction of each of the ECM concerts.

This performance, and all of ECM’s Mainstage performances this season, will be recorded live and then made available on Emerald TV, ECM’s subscription-based streaming platform for performances and additional video content.

About Telegraph Quartet

The Telegraph Quartet (Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violins; Pei-Ling Lin, viola; Jeremiah Shaw, cello) formed in 2013 with an equal passion for standard and contemporary chamber music repertoire. Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “…an incredibly valuable addition to the cultural landscape” and “powerfully adept… with a combination of brilliance and subtlety,” the Telegraph Quartet was awarded the prestigious 2016 Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the Grand Prize at the 2014 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition.

The Quartet has performed in New York City’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Chamber Masters Series, and at festivals including the Chautauqua Institute, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, and the Emilia Romagna Festival. They have collaborated with pianists Leon Fleisher and Simone Dinnerstein; cellists Norman Fischer and Bonnie Hampton; violinist Ian Swensen; composer-vocalist Theo Bleckmann; and the Henschel Quartett. A fervent champion of 20th- and 21st-century repertoire, the Telegraph Quartet has premiered works by John Harbison, Robert Sirota, and Richard Festinger. In 2018 the Quartet released its debut album, Into the Light, featuring works by Anton Webern, Benjamin Britten, and Leon Kirchner on the Centaur label. In spring 2023, the Telegraph Quartet will release its next album on Azica Records, featuring Ravel’s renowned quartet and Schoenberg’s first quartet.

Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Quartet is currently on the chamber music faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music as the Quartet-in-Residence and has given master classes at the SFCM Collegiate and Pre-College Divisions, through the Morrison Artist Series at San Francisco State University, and abroad at the Taipei National University of the Arts, National Taiwan Normal University, and in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Telegraph has also served as artists-in-residence at the Interlochen Adult Chamber Music Camp, SoCal Chamber Music Workshop, and Crowden Music Center Chamber Music Workshop. In November 2020, the Telegraph Quartet launched ChamberFEAST!, a chamber music workshop in Taiwan and in fall 2020, Telegraph launched an online video project called TeleLab, in which the ensemble collectively breaks down the components of a movement from various works for quartet. For more information, visit www.telegraphquartet.com.

About Kristin Lee, ECM Artistic Director

A recipient of the 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant, as well as a top prizewinner of the 2012 Walter W. Naumburg Competition and the Astral Artists’ 2010 National Auditions, Kristin Lee is a violinist of remarkable versatility and impeccable technique who enjoys a vibrant career as a soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, and educator. “Her technique is flawless, and she has a sense of melodic shaping that reflects an artistic maturity,” writes the St. Louis PostDispatch, and The Strad reports, “She seems entirely comfortable with stylistic diversity, which is one criterion that separates the run-of-the-mill instrumentalists from true artists.

In addition to her dynamic performing career, Lee was recently appointed to the faculty of University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music as Assistant Professor of Violin. She is the artistic director of Emerald City Music in Seattle, a chamber music series she co-founded in 2015. Also an accomplished chamber musician, Kristin Lee is a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, performing at Lincoln Center in New York and on tour with CMS throughout each season, as well as a member of Camerata Pacifica in Santa Barbara, sitting as The Bernard Gondos Chair.

Kristin Lee has appeared as soloist with leading orchestras including The Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Ural Philharmonic of Russia, Korean Broadcasting Symphony, Guiyang Symphony Orchestra of China, Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional of Dominican Republic, and many others. She has performed on the world’s finest concert stages, including Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, the Kennedy Center, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Ravinia Festival, the Louvre Museum in Paris, Washington, D.C.’s Phillips Collection, and Korea’s Kumho Art Gallery.

Born in Seoul, Lee began studying violin at age five and within one year won First Prize at the Korea Times Violin Competition. In 1995, she moved to the US to continue her studies under Sonja Foster and in 1997 entered The Juilliard School’s Pre-College. In 2000, Lee was chosen to study with Itzhak Perlman after he heard her perform with the Pre-College Symphony. Lee holds a Master’s degree from The Juilliard School. For more information, visit www.violinistkristinlee.com.

About ECM

Emerald City Music (ECM) is the Pacific Northwest home for eclectic, intimate, and vibrant classical chamber music experiences. Deemed "the beacon for the casual-classical movement" (CityArts), ECM hosts world-renowned musicians in unique concert experiences in its South Lake Union home venue, 415 Westlake. Catch them on tour also in residence in Olympia, Bellingham, and New York City.

Founded in 2015, Emerald City Music produces and tours seven productions annually, with each tour visiting Seattle’s South Lake Union (415 Westlake, a chic contemporary venue with an open bar), Olympia’s Minnaert Center (a 495 seat modern concert hall), a once annual concert at the Bellingham Music Festival, and an annual concert in New York City.

ECM gained recognition regionally and nationally as a major player in the chamber music scene. Artistic Director Kristin Lee –– a touring violinist awarded the Avery Fisher Career Grant and who is a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center –– is regarded for her innovative programming that both honors the tradition of chamber music while expanding the genre’s boundary past common limits. Emerald City Music made a name for itself beginning in its second season with a national collaborative commission with Grammy-winning composer John Luther Adams, and has continued to press the boundary of chamber music with accolades like a tour of Steve Reich’s iconic and rare Music for 18 Musicians, a pitch-black performance of Georg Haas’s “In the Dark” quartet, and the West Coast debut of the Danish folk group The Dreamers’ Circus.

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