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'Musical Dim Sum' with the Ying Quartet May 8
Story posted May 03, 2008
The Ying Quartet will perform a program combining traditional classical repertoire with works by contemporary Chinese American composers at 8 p.m. Thursday, May 8, 2008, in Studzinski Recital Hall, Kanbar Auditorium.
Tickets are required, and the concert has just a few tickets remaining. Call the David Saul Smith Union information desk for ticket availability. Tickets may still be available at the door; patrons seeking tickets are advised to arrive early.
With its wide-ranging musical ability, the Ying Quartet has won nationwide critical acclaim and has become one of America's most exciting and compelling young ensembles. Their reputation for "instinctive unanimity" (Philadelphia Inquirer) and "astonishing, refreshing exaltation and exhilaration" (Los Angeles Times) is matched by their unparalleled success in making creative connections between chamber music and other art forms.
Now in its second decade, the Ying Quartet continues to develop ways of making artistic and creative expression an essential part of everyday life.
Natives of Chicago, the Ying siblings began their career as an ensemble in 1992 in the farm town of Jesup, Iowa (population 2,000) as the first artists involved in the National Endowment for the Arts Chamber Music Rural Residencies Program. The Quartet—Timothy, violin; Janet, violin; Phillip, viola; David, cello—participated fully in the community, performing on countless occasions for audiences of six to six hundred people in a residency so successful that it was widely chronicled in the national and international media, including features in The New York Times and STRAD magazine and on CBS Sunday Morning.
While the Quartet was in Jesup, its exceptional musical qualities earned it the 1993 Naumburg Chamber Music Award. In the years since, the Yings have established an international reputation for excellence in performance with appearances in virtually every major American city; at numerous festivals including Tanglewood, Aspen and San Miguel; and in Europe, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Japan and Taiwan.
In 1999, the Quartet introduced LifeMusic, a multiyear commissioning project supported by the Institute for American Music, designed to produce a distinctively American string quartet repertoire. Each season, a pair of new works by established and emerging composers is featured in the Yings' diverse performance activities.
With "Musical Dim Sum," the Yings continue to extend their repertoire of innovative programming concepts while celebrating their own cultural heritage. On these programs, the Quartet includes a selection of short works by Chinese American composers in the framework of a traditional concert, giving audiences the treat of a diverse sampling of this music.
Their Bowdoin College concert program will include Haydn's Quartet in G Major, Ravel's Quartet in F, Chou Wen-chung's Leggeriezza and Larghetto nostalgico, Lei Liang's Gobi Gloria, and Vivan Fung's Pizzicato for String Quartet.