Critics Pick

Cypress Quartet presents 12th Annual Call & Response Concert

Cypress String Quartet

The Cypress String Quartet (Cecily Ward, violin; Tom Stone, violin; Ethan Filner, viola; and Jennifer Kloetzel, cello) presents its 12th Annual Call & Response concert. The concert explores the theme of “Exoticism in Music,” and includes the world premiere of a new string quartet by composer Jeffery Cotton as well as Glazunov’s Novelettes, Schulhoff’s Five Pieces, Bloch’s Landscapes, and Debussy’s String Quartet, Op. 10. A pre-concert talk with Cotton will begin at 7:15pm. The concert will be preceded by two free performances of music from the program on Sunday, April 10 at 3pm at the Forest Hill Clubhouse (381 Magellan Ave., San Francisco) and on Saturday, April 23 at 11am at Community Music Center (544 Capp St., San Francisco).

The Call & Response program was born out of the Cypress’s commitment to present music as a dynamic and ongoing process of inspiration. Each year, the ensemble selects works from the standard string quartet repertoire (the call) and commissions a new work (the response) based on inspiration derived from the older works, exploring how contemporary music is a natural evolution of older works. For Call & Response 2011, Cotton has written a new work in response to the Glazunov, Schulhoff, Bloch, and Debussy pieces on the program.

Cellist Jennifer Kloetzel explains the concert’s theme: “Debussy was responding to the Javanese Gamelan that he heard at the Paris Exposition in 1889. Bloch was responding to the craze of the time, ‘Nanook of the North,’ but also imagining the music of Tonga. Glazunov takes us back in time to ancient Russian chant, but also to Spain and the Orient, and Schulhoff explores dances from five cultures. The question is, what does Exoticism mean today? What will Jeffery write in a world where you can hear any sort of music with a click of a button on your computer!”

Over just a decade, the Cypress String Quartet has commissioned and premiered more than 30 new works, four of which are now included on Chamber Music America’s list of 101 Great American Ensemble Works. Known for their elegant performances, the Cypress’s sound has been called “beautifully proportioned and powerful” by The Washington Post, and the ensemble has been singled out by Chamber Music Magazine as “a Generation X ensemble to watch.”