PROGRAM
Frictionless Objects (2024) Ryan Carter (b. 1980)
Tree of Life (2025) Mario Diaz de Leon world premiere (b. 1979)
adjust (2021) Anna Webber (b. 1984)
is program features recent music written for us, that we are excited to bring to Richmond for the frst time. We premiered Ryan Carter’s piece last year and this is our third performance of the work; it incorporates wild extended techniques and expanded tonality in an emotive 10-minute work. Diaz de Leon’s 20-minute "Tree of Life” is an ecotheologically motivated response to Olivier Messiaen's “Quatuor pour la fn du temps” inspired by Rev 22:1-2. And fnally, a piece we love so much we have recorded it and will release it on our debut album (“adjust,” Cantaloupe Music, April 25, 2025), Anna Webber’s “adjust.” We have toured this piece across the US and Europe; it is one of the frst major pieces Webber has composed for an ensemble focusing on composed music. “adjust” tackles the meeting of the composed and improvised music worlds in a thrilling 5-part work.
Please silence cell phones before the concert. Recording, taping, photographing are strictly prohibited.
Ryan Carter (b. 1980) composes for instruments, voices, and computers, often exploring new musical possibilities presented by emerging technologies while remaining critical of the unintended side effects embedded in them. Alternately playful, quirky, visceral, and intense, his music has been described by TheNewYorkTimesas “imaginative … like, say, a Martian dance party.” Ryan has been commissioned by Carnegie Hall, the National Flute Association, the MATA Festival, Present Music, and many ensembles and soloists, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the American Composers Forum, and Meet the Composer. An early innovator of interactive music for mobile devices, Ryan released iMonkeypants(an iOS album of motion-controlled interactive music) on the App Store in 2012. Beginning in 2017, Ryan developed a web-based system for allowing audiences to interact with performers by playing motion-controlled sound on their phones, leading to collaborations with the Boise Philharmonic, Hub New Music, the JACK Quartet, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Seattle Symphony artist-in-residence Seth Parker Woods, the Society for New Music, and musicians of the San Diego Symphony. Ryan holds degrees from Oberlin Conservatory (BMus), Stony Brook University (MA), and New York University (PhD). Ryan is Associate Professor of Music at Hamilton College.
Mario Diaz de Leon (b. 1979) is a composer and performer whose work explores intersections of sound, spirituality, and technology. Diaz de Leon’s music has been acclaimed for its “remarkable textures and vivid atmosphere” (NewYorker), “crystalline attacks” (Groove), “snarling exuberance” (Pitchfork), and “hallucinatory intensity” (TheNewYorkTimes). His chamber works are documented across four albums and are published by Project Schott New York, and he has performed his live electronic music internationally at CTM Festival,
Donaufestival, Tinnitus Music Series, Nowadays, The Kitchen, and Roulette. Since 2019, he has taught at Stevens Institute of Technology as Assistant Professor of Music and Technology.
Anna Webber (b. 1984) is a flutist, saxophonist, and composer whose interests and work live in the aesthetic overlap between avant-garde jazz and new classical music. Her music has been called “visionary and captivating,” (WallStreetJournal), and “heady music [that] appeals to the rest of the body” (NPR). In 2024 alone, she received the Herb Albert Award in the Arts, a Chamber Music America New Jazz Works commission, and was voted top of both the tenor saxophone and flute “Rising Star” categories in the DownbeatCritic’s Poll. A prolific bandleader, Webber is also known for the Webber Morris Big Band, a group she co-leads with saxophonist and composer Angela Morris, and her quintet Shimmer Wince (featuring Adam O’Farrill on trumpet, Mariel Roberts on cello, Elias Stemeseder on synthesizer, and Lesley Mok on drums) which explores Just Intonation in a jazz context. Webber is a 2021 Berlin Prize Fellow, and a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow. She has additionally been honored with the Margaret Whitton Award (administered by the Jazz Gallery); grants from the Copland Fund (2021 & 2019), the Shifting Foundation (2015 & 2022), the New York Foundation for the Arts (2017), the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and the Canada Council for the Arts; and residencies from Exploring the Metropolis (2019), the MacDowell Colony (2017 & 2020), the Millay Colony for the Arts (2015), and the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts (2014). Webber is originally from British Columbia.
Formed in 2020, the Anzû Quartet is an ensemble dedicated to the music of our time and the recent canon. A collaboration between internationally renowned performers of contemporary music, our quartet pays homage to Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pourlafindutempsby actively commissioning and performing new works for this iconic instrumentation alongside Messiaen’s original masterpiece.
Anzû’s recent seasons have featured performances across the United States, Berlin, Vienna, Lithuania, Latvia, the Netherlands, and Croatia, along with a digital premiere at UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance. In its short history, Anzû Quartet has commissioned new works from Anna Webber, Aftab Darvishi, Ryan Carter, and Mario Diaz de Leon, among others. In 2025, Anzû Quartet will release 2 debut CDs on the record label Cantaloupe Music (Bang on a Can, So Percussion, Alarm Will Sound, etc). The first, Adjust , features music written for the group by Anna Webber (“one of the most creative artists of the current century” - Peter Margasak) and quartet member Ken Thomson. In addition, they will release their gripping new take on Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuorpourla findutemps,in which Anzû Quartet reworks this work in the context of contemporary musicians in New York, treating this as a current, vital masterpiece.
The members of Anzû are veterans of New York City's vital contemporary music community and have frequently collaborated with one another across a wide range of musical endeavors and acclaimed international performances. Olivia De Prato (violin), Ashley Bathgate (cello), Ken Thomson (clarinet), and Karl Larson (piano) have been lauded by critics and musicians worldwide, and have been instrumental in helping form and cement the work of important NY-based chamber groups such as the Bang on a Can All - Stars , Mivos Quartet ,
Eighth Blackbird , Ensemble Signal , and Bearthoven . They have premiered works by some of the most important composers of our time at some of the most prestigious venues in the world. The name “Anzû” refers to a massive, fire and water breathing bird found in Babylonian and Sumerian mythology. In these ancient texts, Anzû is linked to death and destruction as well as birth and creation, reflecting the juxtaposing themes of calamity and salvation often expressed through birdsong in Messiaen's quartet.
www.anzuquartet.com