by Argus Quartet

2021 OPEN STAGE
“Goodbye 460 Park, Building the Future Together”

Presented by the Korean Cultural Center New York

Friday, August 27, 2021, 12 pm
KCCNY YouTube Channel

The last performance we present is NARRATIVES OF SEASONS by Argus Quartet.

The Argus Quartet will present composer Juri Seo's string quartet "Infinite Season." Juri Seo is a Korean-American composer and professor at Princeton University. "Infinite Season" was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation for the Argus Quartet. The piece blends field recordings of bird calls and cicadas within the string quartet texture to evoke a strong presence of nature.

Audio recordings of personal narratives spoken by Korean and Korean-American voices, featuring memories of and reactions to the seasons—both the seasons as they occur in nature and the metaphorical seasons of life—are included in this four-movement piece. A variety of voices are represented from different "seasons'' of life, from young children to older adults in their 70s and 80s. Throughout the musical performance itself, videos by renowned videographer Hyungkun Lee of Korean landscapes throughout the seasons will be projected to illustrate the changing nature of the music.

In all performances, the Argus Quartet strives to connect with music lovers of all ages who are open-minded, inquisitive, and excited to hear music presented in bold and unique ways. Through this <2021 Open Stage: "Goodbye 460 Park"> project, the Quartet hopes to specifically highlight Korean culture through recorded voices, stories, and videos from the Korean and Korean-American communities. The Quartet wishes to actively engage and connect with people from the community in a deep way by talking to them and hearing their stories, and looks forward to sharing this special project with everyone so people can have the opportunity to interact with, and celebrate, vibrant Korean culture.

PROGRAM

Infinite Season

I. Winter-Spring

II. Spring-Summer

III. Summer-Fall

IV. Fall-Winter

PROGRAM NOTE by the Composer

“String Quartet - Infinite Season” was inspired by the changes I observed in nature over the course of a year. Each movement corresponds to one season’s transformation into the next. The first, Winter-Spring, was written in February and March of 2017, while I was in residence at the Copland House in Cortlandt, NY. It snowed heavily that year. After each snow, golden sunlight hinted at the spring’s coming warmth. The turbulent fluctuation of the weather made me acutely aware of the passage of time. The seasons seemed to alternate by the day, yet the certainty of spring never faltered. Constant throughout these changes were the sounds of the black-capped chickadees that populate this heavily wooded area. Their charming call—a simple two-note fee-bee—became the principal motive of the first movement.

The work progressed with the seasons. In Spring-Summer, the chickadees fade to an undertone as the other birds of summer begin to sing. The first cicadas appear with a faint hum, then a buzzing chorus. In Summer-Fall, their death completes the arc of one season. Silence follows. Unlike the other seasons, the beginning of Fall-Winter came to me simply as a melodic fragment demarcated by stillness, as if symbolizing a demise. The winter—the most intimate season of all—gets its own song, and its variations span Fall-Winter and encompass all of the preceding music, like memories of the year that’s passed. The journey ends with more birds: the snow buntings’ chew-ki-tik ki-ki echoing in the depth of winter.

“String Quartet - Infinite Season” tells the story of a year unfolding, sound by sound. As the vividness of each season merges into an perpetual year-long cycle, the four movements of the quartet connect seamlessly through continuous transitions and shared musical materials. The four instruments work together, like a flock of birds, to create a dense polyphony. Through their incessant canons, distinct lines fuse into a single texture, enabling sonic transformations from one moment to the next (as when, for example, the chorus of birds change into a chorus of cicadas at the end of the second movement). I experienced the constant flux of the sounds of nature as a bright stillness, shining through the violence of external change.

This was my solace: the seasons, with their infinite gradations of difference, will return again, and the birds and insects will carry on, cycle after cycle, an infinite rebirth.

“String Quartet - Infinite Season” was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress for the Argus Quartet. It was written over a one year period from February 2017 to January 2018. (www.juriseomusic.com)

Argus Quartet

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“[This] vivacious foursome … plays canonical standards with authority and
verve and approaches modern music with care and assurance.”
The New Yorker

The Argus Quartet is dedicated to encouraging the joys of human connection, community, and discovery by bringing a wide-ranging repertoire to life through bold and meaningful programming and a vibrant commitment to collaboration and education, winning recognition as a "vivacious foursome … [that] plays canonical standards with authority and verve and approaches modern music with care and assurance" (The New Yorker).

Praised for playing with "supreme melodic control and total authority" and "decided dramatic impact" (Calgary Herald), the Quartet has quickly emerged as one of today's most dynamic and versatile ensembles, winning First Prize at both the 2017 M-Prize Chamber Arts Competition and the 2017 Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition. Since then, increasingly busy concert seasons have taken the Quartet to some of the country's most prestigious venues and festivals, including Carnegie's Weill and Zankel Halls, Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, Chamber Music Society of Detroit, the Ravinia Festival, the Albany Symphony's American Music Festival, and Music Academy of the West.

Highlights of the 2019-20 season included a debut performance for Lincoln Center's Great Performers series, along with a return engagement in New York for the Schneider Concerts at the New School.

Clara Kim (violin)

Giancarlo Latta (violin)

Maren Rothfritz (viola)

Audrey Chen (cello)

Juri Seo (composer)

Website

Juri Seo is a Korean-American composer and pianist based in Princeton, New Jersey. She seeks to write music that encompasses extreme contrast through compositions that are unified and fluid, yet complex. She merges many of the fascinating aspects of music from the past century—in particular its expanded timbral palette and unorthodox approach to structure—with a deep love of functional tonality, counterpoint, and classical form. With its fast-changing tempi and dynamics, her music explores the serious and the humorous, the lyrical and the violent, the tranquil and the obsessive. She hopes to create music that loves, that makes a positive change in the world—however small—through the people who are willing to listen.

Her composition honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Koussevitzky Commission from the Library of Congress, a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship and the Andrew Imbrie Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Kate Neal Kinley Memorial Fellowship, Copland House Residency Award, and the Otto Eckstein Fellowship from Tanglewood. She has received commissions from the Fromm Foundation, the Barlow Endowment, and the Tanglewood Music Center. Her portrait albums "Mostly Piano" and “Respiri” were released by Innova Recordings. She holds a D.M.A. (Dissertation: Jonathan Harvey's String Quartets, 2013) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she studied with Reynold Tharp. She has also attended the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (Rome, corsi di perfezionamento with Ivan Fedele) and Yonsei University (Seoul, B.M.). She has been a composition fellow at the Tanglewood, Bang on a Can, and SoundSCAPE festivals, the Wellesley Composers Conference, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. She is Associate Professor of Music at Princeton University.

Juri lives in Lawrenceville, just outside of Princeton, with her husband, percussionist Mark Eichenberger and a little mutt named Roman.

ABOUT KCCNY’s OPEN STAGE

First introduced in 2012, Open Stage has been playing a crucial role in presenting opportunities for rising performers not only based in New York but also directly coming from Korea to display their talents to a wide New York audience. Now in its 7th season, Open Stage is continuously expanding its existing platform, presenting various genres of works including Korean traditional music and dance, modernized Korean creative world music, jazz, as well as contemporary dance and theater. This year, through a highly-competitive process, six groups have been chosen to put on yet again another uniquely wonderful showcase, online.

To check out the lineup of <2021 Open Stage: “Goodbye 460 Park, Building the Future Together”>, please click here.

Narratives of Seasons