D.J. Sparr’s new string quartet, Avaloch, was given it’s premiere by the Momenta Quartet at the Tenri Cultural Institue.
New York Classical Review’s George Grelia reported:
“Avaloch set the aesthetic tone for the entire concert, the unique sound of American homespun experimentation, free of ideology and full of curiosity. The piece revolves around an agitated, yearning tune, and the music has a rough-hewn quality, like shape-note singing, particularly in the counterpoint. There is also pre-recorded music that played asynchronously from smart phones held inside ceramic pots by each musician.
Avaloch has a fulfilling sense of waywardness, disregarding obvious formal considerations and searching for a shape organic to itself. That quality, and Momenta’s weighty, lyrical playing gave it a social quality that is fundamental to the Ivesian conception of music making.”
Read the full review here.
