Arditti Quartet Student Composer Workshops (Aug. 20-21, 2020)

Arditti Quartet: (from left) Ashot Sarkissjan (violin), Ralf Ehlers (viola), Irvine Arditti (violin), and Lucas Fels (cello)

During the Fall 2020 portion of their CAI residency, the world-renowned Arditti Quartet will be performing and giving workshops focused upon Buffalo and Western New York composers. This will be the first time the quartet has played together since pandemic lockdowns began.

On August 20-21, the Arditti Quartet will connect with UB student composers and composers that were to be featured at the 2020 June in Buffalo festival. These workshops were originally scheduled to take place in person, in Buffalo, NY, but were postponed due to COVID-19 travel restrictions.

Ongoing travel restrictions require creative solutions. This portion of the Arditti Quartet's CAI residency will take place in virtual space. The musicians will join the composers via live feed from the Hellerau European Centre for the Arts in Dresden, Germany. Each composer will have the opportunity to work with the Quartet individually on a rehearsal and performance of their work. This is an invaluable opportunity for young composers to hear their work interpreted by the finest performers of contemporary music, to give and receive feedback, and to refine their work. At the end of each workshop, the composer will have a high-quality recording of the performance.

“The Arditti Quartet plays and lives intensely, even though we four musicians have seen ourselves slowed down, even stopped, in the past weeks...After long months in which we were unable to rehearse together, let alone perform, we will discover something new about ourselves and the others--we have to and we want to. ”
Irvine Arditti

Composers:

  • Tomek Arnold Arnold, Are you a vinyard
  • Edgar Girtain IV, For Aurora No. 2
  • Daniel Gostelow, String Quartet
  • Yifan Guo, Wanderer in May
  • Jack Herscowitz, For there They Were...
  • Joel Kirk, Miasma
  • Young Jun Lee, Revelation
  • Xuesi Xu, Red Winter

About the Arditti Quartet

The Arditti Quartet enjoys a global reputation for their spirited and technically refined interpretations of contemporary and earlier 20th century music. Several hundred works have been written for the ensemble since its foundation by violinist Irvine Arditti in 1974 and have given the Arditti Quartet a firm place in music history. The quartet’s extensive discography now features well over 200 CDs and many works have been recorded in the composers’ presence. Over the past 45 years, the ensemble has received many prizes for its work. It has won the Deutscher Schallplatten Preis several times and the Gramophone Award for the best recording of contemporary music three times. The prestigious Ernst von Siemens Music Prize was awarded to them in 1999 for lifetime achievement in music.