Sounds of Now: Quartet for Heart & Breath

RICHARD REED PARRY Quartet for Heart and Breath (6’)
KATE WHITLEY Six Charlotte Mew Settings (16’)
JOHN TAVENER The World (10’)New Commission (8’)
MEREDITH MONK String Songs (20’)
CASSANDRA MILLER Thanksong (12’) 

Music by Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry opens this concert of sumptuous, 21st century compositions for string quartet, performed by Phaedra Ensemble with Lotte Betts-Dean, a vocalist praised by The Guardian for her “unmissable, urgent musicality”.  

Following its collaboration with American composer Meredith Monk, performer and Godmother of the New York experimental music scene, Phaedra performs the composer’s only string quartet, String Songs. Mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean then joins the quartet to present works by Kate Whitley and John Tavener, as well as Cassandra Miller’s modern masterpiece Thanksong, a tender reflection on Beethoven’s late Quartet in A minor (Op.132).