Press Release: "World Premiere of Quintet Piece by Keeril Makan"

October 12, 2004 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Dominique Pelletey, (510) 595-8448 dominique@delsolquartet.com

The Del Sol String Quartet announces the world premiere of a quintet for percussion and strings by Keeril Makan in a program of contemporary music titled “Keeril, Gabi, John and Lou”

Friday, November 19th, 2004, 8 p.m.
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum
701 Mission St @ 3rd, San Francisco
Tickets: $21/$14 seniors/$7 students
For tickets, call (415) 978.2787 or www.YerbaBuenaArts.org

Lou Harrison (1917 - 2003) String Quartet Set (1979)
Gabriela Lena Frank (b.1971) Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout (2001)
John Adams (b. 1947) John’s Book of Alleged Dances (1994) selection
Keeril Makan (b. 1972) Static Rising for string quartet and percussion (2004)


Drawing from the most prodigious local talent, John Adams and the late Lou Harrison, as well as exciting, award-winning newcomers Gabriela Lena Frank and Keeril Makan, the Del Sol String Quartet, joined by John Bartlit, percussion, offer a program of diverse, evocative and ground-breaking music, including a world-premiere commissioned by the Del Sol String Quartet with a grant from the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation Special Awards Program and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

On November 19, 2004, the Del Sol String Quartet will present a concert at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum, featuring the world premiere of a piece by composer, Keeril Makan. This performance is the culmination of a project made possible by the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation Special Awards Program awarded in 2002 for new music composition. With all four members of the Del Sol String Quartet being Bay Area natives, they chose to celebrate, in the spirit of the award designed for Northern Californian artists, the talent and diversity of our region. The program will include 3 other pieces by important Bay Area composers Lou Harrison, John Adams, and Gabriela Lena Frank. Both Harrison and Adams were the previous grantees of the award for new music composition last given in 1989. Gabriela Lena Frank is the youngest composer published by G. Schirmer Inc.
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The DSSQ has a long history collaborating with Keeril Makan, playing his first string quartet, Cut, in 1998, while the composer was a graduate student at Cal, Berkeley. The quartet has since released two of Makans pieces on their CDs Short Cuts and Tear, and violist Charlton Lee will be premiering a duo (Meet the Composer Commissioning Grant) for viola and clarinet in 2005. The new work on the “Keeril, Gabi, John and Lou “program is for quartet and percussion, with collaborator John Bartlit on percussion.

Keeril Makan about his new piece:
Static Rising for string quartet and percussion (2004)

My main source of inspiration in this piece is the raw physicality of the instruments themselves. In intimate detail, I am seeking to reveal the richness of the sonic combination of percussion and stringed instruments. There is an ongoing play in the piece on ventures into and out of the nebulous and fertile territory that exists between pitch and noise. Some of the areas explored in this piece include unexpected temporal mutations and rhythmic intricacies. There are sustained sections punctuated by violent attacks and noisy outbursts, as well as sparse but carefully structured timbral explorations. I am very fortunate to be writing for the Del Sol String Quartet, whose musical energy and strengths are already familiar to me. As a result of this knowledge, I have confidently pushed the piece into unknown areas and presented the group with new performance challenges, knowing that they will respond with their characteristic musical bravura, energy, and intelligence.

The program will be repeated on:
Saturday, November 20, 2004 8pm
TATEUCHI HALL
Community School of Music and Arts at Finn Center
230 San Antonio Circle, Mountain View
Tickets: $21/$14 seniors/$7 students
(This new building received
the 2004 American Institute of Architects SF chapter Design Award.)

Sunday, November 21, 2004 3pm
DANCE PALACE
503 B Street (on the corner of 5th and B Streets), Point Reyes
Tickets: $21/$14 seniors/$7 students
($15/$13 seniors /$7 kids for Dance Palace members)