24/25 CLASSICAL SERIES
PUBLIQuartet
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2024 | 7:30 PM
Shannon Hall at Memorial Union
Curtis Stewart, Violin
Jannina Norpoth, Violin
Nick Revel, Viola
Hamilton Berry, Cello
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PROGRAMMED BY THE PERFORMING ARTS COMMITTEE
The Wisconsin Union Directorate Performing Arts Committee (WUD PAC) is a student-run organization that brings world-class artists to campus by programming the Wisconsin Union Theater’s annual season of events.
WUD PAC focuses on pushing range and diversity in its programming while connecting to students and the broader Madison community.
In addition to planning the Wisconsin Union Theater’s season, WUD PAC programs and produces studentcentered events that take place in the Wisconsin Union Theater’s Play Circle. WUD PAC makes it a priority to connect students to performing artists through educational engagement activities and more.
WUD PAC is part of the Wisconsin Union Directorate’s Leadership and Engagement Program and is central to the Wisconsin Union’s purpose of developing the leaders of tomorrow and creating community in a place where all belong.
PROGRAM
WHAT IS AMERICAN: RHYTHM NATION
Jessie Montgomery (b. 1981)
Jeff Scott (b. 1967)
Rhiannon Giddens (b. 1977)
Daniel Bernard Roumain (b. 1971)
Jessie Montgomery
Voodoo Dolls (2008)
Blues for Buddy (2024)
At the Purchaser’s Option (2016, arr. PUBLIQuartet 2021)
Excerpts from Hip Hop Studies and Etudes, Book I (2006)
Break Away (2013)
Lilting
Songbird
Smoke
Quick Pass Break Away
INTERMISSION
Eddie Venegas
Jlin (b. 1987)
Julia Perry (1924–1979)
Duke Ellington (1899–1974)
Vijay Iyer (b. 1971)
Cachumbandeando en clave (2024)
Baobab (2024)
Prelude for Piano (1946, rev. 1962), arr. Hamilton Berry
Arrangement by Hamilton Berry of Prelude for
by kind permission of The
Come Sunday from Black, Brown, and Beige (1943)
Dig the Say for string quartet (2012) I. carry the ball IIa. this thing together IIb. up from the ground III. to live tomorrow
Piano
Estate of Julia A. Perry.
PROGRAM NOTES
WHAT IS AMERICAN: RHYTHM NATION
Following up their two GRAMMY-nominated projects, What Is American: Rhythm Nation celebrates American rhythmic traditions as expressions of bodily autonomy and history keeping. From the African rhythms and fiddle techniques that propel Trevor Weston’s Juba to the iconic grooves of Janet Jackson, the program includes improvisations on the beat breaks of Daniel Bernard Roumain’s Hip Hop Etudes and original works by PUBLIQuartet, alongside new works by Pulitzer Prize finalist Jlin, Mazz Swift, Eddie Venegas, and Jeff Scott, commissioned with the support of a 2024 Chamber Music America Artistic Projects grant. Each of these new works evokes a distinct rhythmic world, reflecting the plurality of American movement(s) and protecting the unspoken spirit of their lineage’s narratives.
Jessie Montgomery: Voodoo Dolls (2008)
Written by PUBLIQuartet’s founding violinist Jessie Montgomery for Rhode Island’s JUMP! Dance Company, Voodoo Dolls presents an ever-shifting texture of propulsive rhythms and percussive sounds, which serves as a backdrop for improvised solos by both violinists. Montgomery says of the piece, “the choreography was a suite of dances, each one representing a different traditional children’s doll: Russian dolls, marionettes, rag dolls, Barbie, voodoo dolls ... The piece is influenced by West African drumming patterns and lyrical chant motives, all of which feature highlights of improvisation within the ensemble.” The frenetic opening and closing sections bookend a somewhat calmer middle, in which the players pass around a melody that evokes the blues tradition.
Duration: 5’
Jeff Scott: Blues for Buddy (2024)
PUBLIQuartet is excited to present this brand-new work by Jeff Scott, a composer and horn player who was a founding member of Imani Winds and is currently Associate Professor of Horn at Oberlin Conservatory of Music. We commissioned this single-movement piece—along with works by Jlin, Mazz Swift, and Eddie Venegas—as part of our Rhythm Nation project, which celebrates American rhythmic traditions as expressions of bodily autonomy and history keeping. We received a 2024 Chamber Music America Artistic Projects grant to commission this work, made possible by the support of the Howard Gilman Foundation.
Duration: 5’
Rhiannon Giddens: At the Purchaser’s Option (2016, arr. PUBLIQuartet 2021)
Inspired by an 1830s advertisement announcing the sale of a Black woman and her child, Rhiannon Giddens’ At the Purchaser’s Option is a meditation on the hard truths of American history. The song is reimagined here in an original arrangement by PUBLIQuartet that includes whispers, sung excerpts of Giddens’ original lyrics, and extended techniques.
Duration: 5’
Daniel Bernard Roumain: Excerpts from Hip Hop Studies and Etudes, Book I (2006)
In the composer’s note for his Hip-Hop Studies and Etudes, Book I, Roumain writes that these are “small, intimate, musical vignettes (one in each key) that explain, examine, and express aspects of hip hop music, from rhythm to timbre to form. What began as a response, a composer’s response, to the musical and cultural needs of students at the Harlem School of the Arts in New York City (where I once served as chair of the Music Theory and Composition Department), these works now represent my own hip hop, techno, ambient, and rock-infused response to Bach’s WellTempered Klavier and Philip Glass’ Music in Twelve Parts. [...] I welcome the re-arranging (or remixing) of any part of this music—feel free to edit, move, delete, repeat, or imagine the music in any manner that you deem fit.”
Duration: 5’
Jessie Montgomery: Break Away (2013)
Break Away was written for PUBLIQuartet in 2013 for a premiere at the Music of Now festival at Symphony Space. The piece was born out of a series of improvisations that we worked on while in residency at the Banff Centre, where we formed a suite of short pieces riffing on several different styles of music, from hip hop to electronica to 20th-century modern. Woven among some of my own chosen imagery, I adapted some of the techniques from that suite into this five-movement work.
The score calls on the quartet to both play with and “break away” from the score at various points, attempting a seamless dialogue between the written score and the whims of the quartet, through which the piece takes on further transformation at each performance.
The first movement, “Lilting,” is an homage to Anton Webern with a focus on gestural dialogue. The second movement, “Songbird,” is an image of an individual’s voice trying to emerge against a harsh facade, and includes the first improvised passages in the work. The third movement, “Smoke,” is loosely based on the form of a jazz tune of my own design. The fourth movement, “Quick Pass,” serves as a transition to the final movement, “Break Away,” in which the quartet incorporates its most open improvised sections.
— Jessie Montgomery
Duration: 12’
Eddie Venegas: Cachumbandeando en clave (2024)
Duration: 5’
Jlin: Baobab (2024)
Duration: 6’
PUBLIQuartet commissioned these two brand-new works with the support of our 2024 Chamber Music America Artistic Projects grant, which was made possible by the Howard Gilman Foundation. As they were still being workshopped at the time these notes were submitted, we look forward to telling you more about them from the stage!
Julia Perry: Prelude for Piano (1946, rev. 1962), arr. Hamilton Berry
This arrangement of the Prelude for Piano celebrates the 100th birthday of American composer Julia Perry, whose music enjoyed a brief window of popularity in the 1950s and '60s, only to go largely unpublished and rarely performed for decades afterward, until very recently. As Dr. Fredara M. Hadley states in her Biographical Sketch of Julia Perry, Perry “may be new to 21st-century listeners, but she was well-known in her lifetime. Listening to her compositions and learning about her life is an act of rediscovery in the purest sense of the word, because the world had, indeed, discovered her.” This reimagining seeks to highlight the original work’s spaciousness and distinctive harmonic palette, and includes a moment for improvisation along the way.
Duration: 3’
Duke Ellington: Come Sunday from Black, Brown, and Beige (1943)
PUBLIQuartet first explored this beautiful jazz standard by Duke Ellington during a recording session with the pianist Lara Downes. We enjoyed it so much that we decided to reimagine it without piano. “Come Sunday” comes from Black, Brown, and Beige, an extended jazz suite that Ellington wrote for his band’s Carnegie Hall debut performance in January 1943. He later added lyrics to this piece, re-releasing it in a 1958 recording featuring gospel singer Mahalia Jackson.
Duration: 3’
Vijay Iyer: Dig the Say for string quartet (2012)
Commissioned by Brooklyn Rider in 2012, Vijay Iyer’s Dig the Say is an homage to the “Godfather of Soul,” James Brown. Iyer says of Brown’s music, “of course it’s best to enjoy it with your body and soul, but there is also much to learn from analyzing his music’s interlocking bass, drums, guitar, horn, and vocal parts. As a composer and bandleader, I have strived for years to put some of his tactics into practice. He brought a lot of ideas to the table about groove, communication, form, and space. Each song has its own vivid and distinct identity, beginning with the intricacies in the rhythm section.” Much of the excitement and challenge of Iyer’s quartet lies in his distribution of such intricate, driving rhythmic textures among multiple players. There are even moments where the score asks a single player to stomp or tap one rhythm while playing another.
The titles of the work’s four continuous movements refer to lyrics delivered emphatically by Brown in his 1969 song “I Don’t Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door, I’ll Get It Myself).”
Duration: 10’
ARTIST BIO
Applauded by The Washington Post as “a perfect encapsulation of today’s trends in chamber music,” and by The New Yorker as “independent-minded,” multi-GRAMMY-nominated PUBLIQuartet (PQ) is an improvising string quartet whose repertoire blends genres and highlights American multiculturalism.
PUBLIQuartet rose in the music scene as winner of the 2013 Concert Artists Guild New Music / New Places award, and in 2019 garnered Chamber Music America’s prestigious Visionary Award for outstanding and innovative approaches to contemporary classical, jazz, and world chamber music. PQ’s genre-bending programs range from newly commissioned pieces to reimaginations of classical works featuring openform improvisations that expand the techniques and aesthetics of the traditional string quartet.
PUBLIQuartet has held artist residencies at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and National Sawdust, and has performed everywhere from Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center to the Montreal, Newport, and Detroit jazz festivals. Their 2016 appearance on The Colbert Report, “Requiem for a Debate”—in which they improvised a live soundtrack to the third presidential debate—not only received over a million views, but also saw The Washington Post declare them "the winner … indubitably.” Their 2023–2024 season includes performances at the University of Southern California, the Library of Congress, and the New York City Ballet, as well as tour dates with jazz artists including Hiromi, Diane Monroe, and Magos Herrera.
The quartet’s latest album, the GRAMMY-nominated What Is American, released in June 2022 on the Bright Shiny Things label, explores resonances between contemporary, blues, jazz, freely-improvised, and rockinflected languages, all of which trace their roots back to the Black and Indigenous musical traditions that inspired Dvořák’s “American” String Quartet, Op. 96. The album also includes CARDS 11-11-2020, written by Roscoe Mitchell for PUBLIQuartet, as well as works by Ornette Coleman, Rhiannon Giddens, and Vijay Iyer.
Committed to creating an inclusive performance space, supporting living composers of varying genres, and expanding the classical canon, PUBLIQuartet was the inaugural ensemble-in-residence for Carnegie Hall’s PlayUSA program in 2021–2022, working with high school music classes across the country on a largescale creative project called Reflections on Resilience. Their innovative PUBLIQ Access program has promoted emerging composers by presenting a wide variety of under-represented music for string quartet—from classical, jazz and electronic, to non-notated, world, and improvised music. Other unique projects include MIND | THE | GAP, a series of creative projects developed by PQ that weave together different styles of music via group composition, arranging, and improvisation. These unique works range from “Bird in Paris” (Claude Debussy meets Charlie Parker) to more recent extended works including Reflections on Beauty, a multimedia celebration of the life and legacy of Madam C. J. Walker featuring visual projections and narration by Walker's great-greatgranddaughter, A’Lelia Bundles.
Founded in 2010, PUBLIQuartet is based in New York City.
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