Arnica Quartet News

Merry Christmas! on Flickr.

Photo: Leo Daedalus

Last night we played at the historic Old Church in downtown Portland as part of the third annual March Music Moderne festival. It was a program that just fell together, largely by accident, but which garnered a lot of praise just for the varied pieces which it contained. We gave the Portland premiere of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Homunculus for string quartet (2007), and accompanied it with works by Arvo Pärt and Osvaldo Golijov, and rounded out the program with the relatively rarely performed Quartet No. 1, Op. 7 by Bartók.

Photo: Jennifer Arnold

We had a bit of a hitch with the church being opened on time, but it was fun to hang out with some of the early bird concertgoers before the building manager arrived - and thank goodness it was not raining or freezing! It was also fun to see the results of a pretty intensive marketing blitz - a nearly full hall! Many thanks to Bob Priest at MMM for his help in getting the word out about our concert (and for the Polish potato vodka he gave us afterward!).

We’re going to do a few touch-ups on the Salonen before we send him a copy of the recording, hopefully he’ll be happy with the result. It’s definitely a piece that we want to keep in our repertoire, and hope to play it a couple times again next season.

Thank you to everyone who turned out to support us and the music! See you next year!

Yes, the mega maestro himself is now following our progress! Now feverishly in rehearsals for a Skype coaching with EPS on March 6th.