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DREAM DRAPERY. Galax Quartet with Karen R. Clark
CD-
1297
Praise for Dream Drapery:

“Three fantastical worlds debouch from this talismanic Galax release!

Marc Mellits’s “String Quartet No. 2, ‘Revolution’.” Pachinko machines at rush hour in a manga Shinjuku. A haunted shop of wind-up toys with an orchestra of sawing skeletons. A civilization emerges from the comic chaos of melted cities; they embrace and sing the national anthem of a vanished land. Winged eyes perch on the musical staves, and high kites soar. An intricate dance of sorrow and joy, scribed on the rolling bosom of a cello glissando.

In Joseph Schwanter’s “Dream Drapery: Thoreau Songs,” The Galax strings are transcendentally clear and precise. And words are wondrous, drawn from the bittersweet poems of Thoreau. I was ensorcelled by the titular song of a “low-anchored cloud…fountain-head and source of rivers, dew-cloth, dream drapery…” Canny contralto Karen Clark outdoes herself; her pace and diction is keyed to a higher logic of sound; each phoneme is considered and deployed with elegant effect. I listened twice, thrice, five times, taking it deeper each time. A platonic cloud of ear.

Robert Morris’s “Radif IV” is a fairyland, a cultural memory bank, brimming with the ravishing music of Atlantis. The lines swoop and interlace in sailor’s knots, tied by the assiduous Galax hands. Wineglass resonances bisect the halves of your brain. Bombay movie music drifts from the seventh heaven of Persia. All orchestrated by the implacable logic of aleatory Arabic jazz.”

—Rudy Rucker, author (The Ware Tetralogy, The Hollow Earth, Hylozoic)

“Dream Drapery by the Galax Quartet and contralto Karen R. Clark is a bold and beautiful recording. The dynamism and exuberant groove of “Revolution,” Marc Mellits’ tribute to the brave Romanian protesters of 1989, are well captured by the Galax Quartet. Robert Morris’ “Radif IV – Stars of the Highest Magnitude” sweeps us along on a minimalist excursion fueled by world music traditions. Best of all is the title work, “Dream Drapery – Thoreau Songs” by Joseph Schwantner. In this performance, the Galax Quartet and Karen Clark are locked sonically in a loving embrace. Clark demonstrates admirable vocal control and great sensitivity in capturing the songs’ many characters. The Galax Quartet matches her with a compelling display of nuance.”

—Hank Dutt, violist (Kronos Quartet)

“I absolutely love this recording!”

—Angela Mariani, Harmonia Early Music, WFIU Public Radio

 

 

“The recording, made in Berkeley, California, is fabulously vibrant, allowing the natural electricity of the performances to reveal itself through the music itself. This is fascinating repertoire, performed, recorded, and presented to the highest possible standards.”

—Colin Clarke, Fanfare, December 2020

DREAM DRAPERY. Galax Quartet with Karen R. Clark

SKU CD-1297 Categories Chamber Music, Classical, Contemporary Composers, Digital Classical Recordings, New Releases, Women Artists

DREAM DRAPERY. Galax Quartet with Karen R. Clark

$14.95

390 in stock

  • Description

Description

DREAM DRAPERY

“The boundaries of the actual are no more fixed and rigid than the elasticity of our imaginations.”
—Henry David Thoreau

THE GALAX QUARTET  with KAREN R. CLARK, contralto

Marc Mellits
String Quartet No. 2, “Revolution”

Joseph Schwantner (Pulitzer Prize for Music, 1979)
Dream Drapery: Thoreau Songs* For Baroque string quartet, contralto and 2 crystal goblets

Robert Morris
Radif IV (Galax version) “Stars of Highest Magnitude”
* 
For Baroque string quartet and crystal goblets
*World premier recordings!

About the Galax Quartet

Elizabeth Blumenstock, David Wilson: Baroque violins; Roy Whelden: viola da gamba; David Morris: Baroque cello

Founded in 2005, the Galax Quartet—two violins, viola da gamba and ‘cello—explores the realm where early music and Baroque instruments intersect with new music and living composers, in classical quartets, film scores, song cycles, jazz, and collaborations with poets and mad scientists.

The Galax Quartet’s instrumentation is modeled on an early version of the string quartet as practiced by the late 18th century composer and viola da gamba player, Carl Friedrich Abel. The period instruments are characterized by the use of gut strings, low angle fingerboards, the absence of chin rests or end pins, and the use of lighter bows balanced nearer to the player’s hand. The ensemble tunes to A 415 Hz. These elements offer a rich pallet of coloration and nuances to composers of new music.

By keeping their ears open to a myriad of modern influences, the Galax Quartet has helped create in little more than a dozen years more music for the ensemble than it inherited from the early classical period.

Each member of the Galax Quartet is a specialist in the field of early music. David Wilson, violin, is author of Georg Muffat on Performance Practice (Indiana University Press); Elizabeth Blumenstock, violin, is a frequent soloist and concertmaster with San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra; cellist David Morris was founder and musical director of the Baroque opera ensemble Teatro Bacchino; and composer and gambist Roy Whelden has been called “a key figure in the world of new music” by Early Music America.

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