SJ Mercury News: Cypress String Quartet revels in Ravel
Source: San Jose Mercury News
February 9, 2012
By Richard Scheinin
Consider two string quartets, locally based and with loyal followings, each in the midst of an important anniversary season (read big round number), and each performing a very French-inspired program, calling upon the musicians' mastery of color, texture and the like. We are talking about the Cypress String Quartet (in its 15th season) and the Alexander String Quartet (in its 30th), whose weekend concerts were worlds apart, in the end.
Let's start with the Cypress, whose Friday-night program was way more intimate and less ballyhooed and -- well, let's just say it -- more satisfying than the Alexander's bigger, star-studded event. Cypress played in the tiniest of venues: the 57-seat Pearson Theatre inside the headquarters of Meyer Sound Laboratories, the high-end audio technology mecca in Berkeley. This salon-size room is like a mini-Walt Disney Concert Hall, with vivid sound and an unforgiving acoustic in which no stray or errant noise goes unnoticed. read more »
SFCV.org: Singing Strings from the Cypress
Source: San Francisco Classical Voice
February 4, 2012
BY BE'ERI MOALEM
One look at the Cypress String Quartet program, and I couldn’t pass it up: Ravel’s incomparable Quartet in F, Erwin Schulhoff’s fierce little Five Pieces for String Quartet, and one of Cypress’ early Call & Response commissions: Jennifer Higdon’s Impressions, written as a response to Ravel’s quartet. The concert was set at 12 Gallagher Lane, a modern art gallery tucked in a side street of San Francisco’s gradually transforming SOMA district. read more »
21st-Century Music: Have Cellos, Will Travel
Source: 21st Century Music
MARCH 1, 2012
By Mark Alburger
Wagner fans travel all over the world to take in performances of the "Ring Cycle." New-music aficionados would do well to learn the way to Le Petit Trianon, the home of the San Jose Chamber Orchestra, which is doing its part to produce exciting concerts featuring living composers. At the ensemble's January 8 recital, the quick out-numbered the dead by 3 to 2 -- not bad odds for classical music, and those three extant writers were all in the hall to take in much-deserved adulation.
The climax was the dynamic, rhythmic, and bluesy Tiento (Fantasy) by Michael Touchi, a tour-de-force of minimalist and vernacular-tinged energy for eight cellos and string orchestra. Spinning off from Heitor Villa-Lobos's celloistic octet Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 (also heard, and printed without the final titular consonants in the program), Touchi ups the ante by sending his cellists into contrapuntal array and disarray against the standing violins, violas, and bass hovering about. The riffs are relentless and appealing, and coloristic and call-and-response touches made their telling effects under the able baton of founder / music director Barbara Day Turner.
Previous to this, the Villa-Lobos shone forth from soprano Ronit Widman-Levy, in a haunting rendition that captured the essence of this baroque-and-brazilian mix. Like some surrealistic pillowy guitar, the cellos pluck and bow against operatic outpourings and hummings, making the case yet again for this most popular of the composer's works.
Related syncretism was evoked in Elena Ruhr's intriguing and inventive Cloud Atlas, after the novel by David Mitchell, where the beautiful solo cellist par excellence Jennifer Kloetzel (also of the Cypress String Quartet) found herself amidst a mixture of stylistic influences, old-and-new, atonal and neo-tonal-blue, all linked motivically by a perfect fifth, followed by another a half-step higher. By contrast, Anica Gallindo's innocent and sophisticated A Wintery Tale offered a pure, neo-romantic world of gorgeous tone and cinematic splendor.
Introducing each half of the program were seminal works by Johann Sebastian Bach, the first the well-known Cello Suite No. 1, again by the radiant Kloetzel, who took the opening Prelude at a breathtaking speed and articulated each phrase of the clever Minuets with passion and precision, bringing a lithe spirit to the concluding Gigue. Lazlo Varga's cello-quartet transcription of the Bach solo violin Sarabande and Bourree rounded out the program with intelligence and verve.
Strings Magazine: Cypress String Quartet Pays Homage to America’s Rich Musical Traditions
Strings Magazine
March 2012
By Heather K. Scott
Cypress String Quartet captures the majestic power of chamber music inspired by the nation’s diversity in sound
American music is one of those oddities that just defies categorization. There’s a diverse platter of folk music, various African-American music, and, of course, Native American music. It is a rich history of melody and dissonance: mountain-inspired tunes from the Appalachian and Rockies, folk from the prairie, African-American beauty from the South, miners’ camp ballads from the central north. And on and on. read more »
ArtsSF.com: Orchestra of a Hundred Premieres — And Now, Two More
Source: artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance
January 10-17, 2012
By Paul Hertelendy
SAN JOSE---The San José Chamber Orchestra, which recently completed its 20th year, brings forth the sounds of today in abundance. With its mostly-female string ensemble under Barbara Day Turner, it is the closest thing we have to the tradition of the (defunct) Women’s Philharmonic. The group is altogether unique: With 100 first-performances to its credit already, the SJCO presented two more world premieres Jan. 8, with cellos at the forefront. read more »
SJ Mercury News: Cellist Jennifer Kloetzel shines in premiere by Elena Ruehr at San Jose Chamber Orchestra
San Jose Mercury News
January 10, 2012
By Richard Scheinin
Sunday night's concert by the San Jose Chamber Orchestra ended with three composers taking bows on stage before a cheering audience at Le Petit Trianon. It was a love fest for living music, and the composers -- Elena Ruehr, Michael Touchi and Anica Galindo -- looked delighted, and possibly shocked. read more »
SF Classical Voice: BluePrint Builds a Castle to Hersant
San Francisco Classical Voice
November 19, 2011
by Be'eri Moalem
Philippe Hersant
Philippe Hersant was possibly the luckiest composer in the world Saturday night. In the season opener of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s BluePrint series, the 63-year-old French composer was treated to a two-hour concert of his own music by an all-star lineup of San Francisco’s best string players plus a deft ensemble of their students. read more »
Gramophone: The American Album reviewed in 12/2011 Issue
Click the clip below to read the article on www.exacteditions.com
Gramophone
December 2011
Page IX Sounds of America
Examiner.com: BluePrint’s total immersion in the music of Philippe Hersant
Examiner.comNovember 20, 2011
Stephen Smoliar, SF Classical Music Examiner
Last night’s BluePrint project concert at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music consisted entirely of compositions by the Parisian composer Philippe Hersant, six works in all, three on either side of the intermission. Given how little exposure Hersant has received in the United States, this was a bold move on the part of Artistic Director Nicole Paiement. However, Hersant emerged as a composer with an accessible and engaging style, along with considerable diversity in his stylistic approaches. Thus, as introductions go, one could not have hoped for a better offering. read more »
Examiner.com: The Cypress String Quartet’s ‘American Album’
Examiner.com
11/16/2011
by Stephen Smoliar, Classical Music Examiner
Buy the Album
Last week saw the release by the Cypress String Quartet (violins Cecily Ward and Tom Stone, viola Ethan Filner, and cello Jennifer Kloetzel) of their latest CD on their own label. The recording is entitled The American Album; and it provides three markedly different perspectives on what we might call “American” music from three decidedly different eras of our country’s history. What makes those perspectives interesting, however, is that each of them has its own form of European connection. read more »
SF Chronicle: CD Review – Cypress String Quartet
San Francisco Chronicle
Thursday, November 3, 2011
by Joshua Kosman
Cypress Performing Arts Assoc. 
Thematic programming is a fine thing, but sometimes it's also OK to simply toss coherence out the nearest window. The latest self-produced CD from the Bay Area's stalwart Cypress String Quartet, billed as "The American Album," begins with a fine matched pair of works on American Indian themes. One, naturally, is Dvorák's "American" Quartet, which draws on a range of melodic material the composer assembled during his stay in this country; the other is the lesser-known but evocative "Two Sketches Based on Indian Themes" by Charles Tomlinson Griffes. read more »
NET Radio: American Album is November 2011 Hot Pick
NET Radio
November 2011
Antonin DVORAK: “American” String Quartet No. 12 in F Op. 96; Charles Tomlinson GRIFFES: Two Sketches Based on Indian Themes; Samuel BARBER: String Quartet in b Op. 11
The Cypress String Quartet celebrates 15 years of great music-making in 2011-2012, and this new CD is certainly a gift to music lovers everywhere. Adopting an American 'can-do' spirit, the Cypress has released the album on its own label, and features composers who were inspired by a similar spirit of seeking a new, uniquely American sound for their own succeeding generations. The performances are outstanding - as usual - from these former Meadowlark Music Festival musicians. read more »
SF Classical Voice: All American, Proud of It
San Francisco Classical Voice
9/20/11
by Benjamin Frandzel
For its newest CD, San Francisco's Cypress String Quartet has turned to an epoch in which the notion of a genuinely American sensibility in concert music was the subject of much debate and aspiration. The three works on The American Album, released on the quartet's own label, reveal various approaches to this challenge in successive generations. The program is enlightening as it explores the evolution of American — or, in one case, American-inspired — composition, and the performances are as fine as any you're likely to hear. read more »
Midwest Record: CYPRESS STRING QUARTET / The American Album
Midwest Record09/17/11
Volume 34/Number 319
We asked one of our fave classical music tourists what they thought of this album and they were completely knocked out. Not knowing much about classical music but knowing what they like, they were blown away by the classy playing of this string quartet and they were blown away by the quality and presentation of the material. read more »
Cape Code Times: Chorale, quartet make beautiful music together
Cape Cod Times
August 10, 2011
by Keith Powers, Contributing Writer
CHATHAM – In an unusual mix of sacred and secular, the Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival continued its run Sunday afternoon at First Congregational Church of Chatham. The Cypress String Quartet joined forces with the Chatham Chorale, directed by Joseph Marchio, in works by Purcell, Dvorak, Randall Thompson and Schubert. read more »