Friday, April 3, 2009
8:00pm Performance, 7:30pm Pre-concert Talk
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum
Program: The Cypress and the U.S. Library of Congress co-commissioned New York based composer Kevin Puts to write a piece in honor of Felix Mendelssohn’s 200th Birthday, using inspiration from Mendelssohn’s Quartet Opus 13 and Beethoven’s Quartet Opus 135. The Cypress will perform the piece’s premiere at the Smithsonian Institute in conjunction with the February 2009 Mendelssohn on the Mall birthday celebration.
The 2009 Call & Response program brings the Mendelssohn Celebration to the San Francisco Bay Area community in a performance April 3, 2009. The commissioned piece will be performed by the Cypress String Quartet, paired with the two pieces that inspired it. Kevin Puts will be speaking before the concert.
Outreach: Be part of the experience! High school and middle school teachers and youth orchestra contacts interested in participating in this program are encouraged to contact the Cypress’s Education Director, Kim Bigelow, to schedule an outreach visit by the Quartet to their class or school in the two weeks prior to the concert. Teachers and students from outreach schools will have the opportunity to receive scholarship tickets to the performance in April 2009.
* NOTE: Scheduling takes place the summer before each Call & Response concert.
Each year, the Cypress String Quartet selects two works from the standard quartet repertoire and commissions (the “call”) a third work (the “response”) based on inspiration from the two older works. By integrating the new music with the familiar, Call & Response explores how newly composed music weaves older works into its sounds, while reflecting trends and ideas of current times—a new composition is born!
The resulting Call & Response program is performed in San Francisco and surrounding areas for students of all levels and background and members of the community. The few weeks before each Call & Response performance, the Cypress String Quartet performs in-class presentations attended by the composer when possible. These outreach efforts deepen students’ interest and learning of chamber music and related themes. Scholarship tickets enable many of these students to attend the public performance free of charge, thus bringing together a concert community of varied ethnicity, age, and economic background.
The outreach presentations, pre-concert lectures and other activities that surround the series bring music into the community and introduce audiences to composers’ thought processes. With this series, the Cypress String Quartet creates a public forum where a broad group of people can come together and share in the universal meaning of music. Parents, teachers, families, and students attend evening performances to witness the world premiere of the new composition.
Generous supporters of Call & Response 2009 include the Argosy Foundation, The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, San Francisco Grants for the Arts, and San Francisco Arts Commission.