A Quartet Crosses Its Boundaries
Lark Quartet/Chamber Artists’ concert on Thursday, with flutist Susan Glaser.
By ALLAN KOZINN - New York Times : Published: January 12, 2008

The New Amsterdam Singers with Lark Chamber Artists.
By STEVE SMITH : Published: March 11, 2008

A Quartet’s Tempting Tasting Menu
Lark Quartet with Yousif Sheronick (percussionist), and the composer Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR).
By STEVE SMITH - New York Times : Published: November 21, 2006

Lark Ascending
The Lark Quartet rocks the house with a tour-de-force performance
By Daniel Felsenfeld - On stage Reviews: Strings Magazine February 2007

Lark Quartet, Making Music As Glorious as All Outdoors
By Tim Page - Washington Post Staff Writer: Tuesday, November 15, 2005

FANFARE MAGAZINE REVIEW
Robert Carl

ALLMUSIC Review
by James Manheim

Other Reviews

Music Review
A Quartet Crosses Its Boundaries

Julieta Cervantes for The New York Times
Lark Quartet/Chamber Artists’ concert on Thursday, with flutist Susan Glaser.

These days young musicians are devoting a lot of thought and energy to redefining themselves, not only in terms of what and where they perform but in purely structural matters as well. The Lark Quartet offered a glimpse of its own ambitious reconfiguration plan on Thursday evening when it presented itself, and friends, as the Lark Chamber Artists in an expansive concert at the newly renovated (and acoustically brightened) Merkin Concert Hall.

The idea is flexibility. The Lark Quartet will continue to play concerts in its traditional arrangement, but as the Lark Chamber Artists it will collaborate with soloists and other ensembles, in repertory ranging from the standard canon to works influenced by pop and world music.

That at least was what the inaugural program suggested. Its first half scarcely broke new ground, except in the aggregate. Each work was a quintet, but if the quartet-with-soloist format is commonplace, having a different guest in each work is not. Most of the music was new, the only exception being the opening Allegro of the Brahms Quintet in G (Op. 111), for which Lawrence Dutton of the Emerson String Quartet joined the Lark players for an unusually steamy, hard-driven performance.

That’s right, just the Allegro. Several works were represented by excerpted movements. Generally this is a bad idea, unless you can argue that individual movements from diverse works add up to a kind of classical mash-up. But that’s an assertion you can’t make if, as in this case, each work is given a spoken introduction.

After the Brahms, Susan Glaser, a flutist, played the shapely, almost arialike solo line in Jennifer Higdon’s “Soliloquy.” At times the flute plays alone as the strings stand aside. But when the strings supported and responded to the flute, the Lark musicians played with a graceful warmth.

A spikier, more assertive side of Ms. Higdon was heard in two movements from “Scenes From the Poet’s Dream” for quartet and piano left hand. The piano line leaps through the full range of the keyboard, and Gary Graffman played it sparklingly. The quartet surrounded the piano line with dark-hued modulations in the second movement and darted around rumbling bass figures in the third.

Between Ms. Higdon’s works, Yousif Sheronick, a percussionist in the Ethos Percussion Group, played his own transcription of the piano line in 3 of the 11 movements of “John’s Book of Alleged Dances,” by John Adams. Percussion works here: Mr. Sheronick replaced the homogenous piano timbre with the hollow but exotic sound of what looked like a makeshift xylophone, and the quartet brought ample swing to Mr. Adams’s alternately bluesy and mechanistic passages.

For the second half of the program, the rest of Mr. Sheronick’s ensemble shared the stage with the Lark for a freewheeling multicultural tour that began with a high-energy arrangement (by Robert Levin) of “Ungundi Wele Wele” by the African pop band Konono No. 1 and also included intensely rhythmic, glissando-heavy Arabic dances by Mohammed Abdul Wahab and Riad El-Soumbati.

Only slightly more formal were two works by the Italian cellist and composer Giovanni Sollima. “Waves,” with its shimmering vibraphone ostinato, fleet string lines and evolving percussion textures, seemed to achieve the composer’s stated goal of evoking a succession of dream states. And “Federico II,” from “Viaggio in Italia,” was similar to the Arabic dances in both spirit and vitality, to say nothing of its sizzling string writing, deftly executed by the quartet.

By ALLAN KOZINN
Published: January 12, 2008
top

The New Amsterdam Singers with Lark Chamber Artists.

Richard Termine for The New York Times

By STEVE SMITH
Published: March 11, 2008
Nature demanded its due on Sunday afternoon, as clocks pushed forward for daylight saving time provided an extra hour of sunlight to observe debris strewn by the ferocious windstorm on Saturday night. The New Amsterdam Singers seemed to have planned in advance with “As Nature Wakes,” an enjoyable mix of American and Czech works featuring nature as subject or metaphor, presented that afternoon at the Church of the Holy Trinity.

This adventurous amateur chorus, founded by the conductor Clara Longstreth in 1968, celebrated its 40th anniversary with the New York premiere of Ronald Perera’s “Why I Wake Early,” jointly commissioned by it and the Chatham Chorale of Cape Cod, Mass. Mr. Perera set eight poems by Mary Oliver, a Cape Cod poet, for mixed chorus, string quartet and piano.

Ms. Oliver’s poetry, which has drawn comparisons to the work of Emerson and Thoreau, reveals an awestruck regard of nature that verges on the religious: “What wretchedness, to believe only in what can be proven,” she writes in “I Looked Up,” the fifth poem in Mr. Perera’s cycle. Her work also demonstrates a discerning eye and an ability to render vivid images with a few deft strokes.

Mr. Perera sensitively underscores both attributes in a cycle spanning a day from one dawn to the next, linked by a subtle, recurring four-note motif. His music neatly conjures Ms. Oliver’s rippling pond, wary crows, flitting bats and lazily unspooling snake. At the same time, the work’s dramatic progression, from the shivering anticipation of “Morning at Great Pond” to the radiant affirmation of the concluding title poem, “Why I Wake Early,” does justice to the poet’s more transcendental intents. Enhanced by Mr. Perera’s estimable knack for setting English, this is a substantial addition to the choral canon.

Ms. Longstreth’s vocalists acquitted themselves honorably in Mr. Perera’s work, singing with secure intonation and smooth blend. The Lark Chamber Artists, a flexible ensemble recently formed by members of the Lark Quartet, provided lively, nuanced accompaniment and played vivaciously in two movements from Dvorak’s Piano Quintet in A.

The chorus sounded fine in two deftly scored works by Matthew Harris, “Love Songs” and “Innocence and Experience.” Its execution was more variable during works by Dvorak, Barber, Petr Eben and Jiri Laburda, most of which would have benefited from cleaner attacks and more sharply defined rhythms.
top

A Quartet’s Tempting Tasting Menu

Jennifer Taylor for The New York Times
Lark Quartet with Yousif Sheronick (percussionist), and the composer Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR).

Most chamber music concerts present audience members with a light appetizer, a contrasting dish and a main course. The Lark Quartet served that much on the first half of its program on Sunday night at Merkin Concert Hall, albeit in reduced portions. The second half was effectively the dessert tray.

The quartet was celebrating the release of a new CD, and the evening’s menu included all of that disc’s contents. First, as on the CD, was the Scherzo movement from Peter Schickele’s String Quartet No. 2, “In Memoriam.” The composer celebrated a relative’s sense of humor in this movement, with lithe melodies and dizzying unison passages. A quotation from Haydn’s “Lark” Quartet acknowledged this ensemble, which commissioned the piece.

In lieu of extensive program notes, the group invited the composers present to introduce their own pieces. Paul Moravec said his “Atmosfera a Villa Aurelia” was a reminiscence of Rome. A brief, arc-shaped meditation, the work included an ardent central passage in keening tones.

Daniel Bernard Roumain had audience members clap in rhythm to convey the spirit of his String Quartet No. 5, “Rosa Parks.” The Lark Quartet reordered the movements, opening with the charged centerpiece, “I Made Up My Mind Not to Move.” The hushed, austere finale, “Isorhythmiclationistic,” was followed by “Klap Ur Handz,” the buoyant introductory movement, which was augmented by the percussionist Yousif Sheronick’s improvised accompaniment.

After intermission came another piece by Mr. Moravec, “Vince & Jan: 1945.” It was inspired by a photograph of the composer’s parents and was based on a passage from the wartime chestnut “I’ll Be Seeing You.” (Singing a few bars to illustrate, Mr. Moravec seemed delighted when most of the audience joined in.) This masterly miniature conveyed warm nostalgia, buoyant swing and wartime unease.

Five songs by George Gershwin, in elegant arrangements by Stanley Silverman, exhausted the material from the CD. But there was a bonus track, and a remix at that: a songful, muscular account of “Federico II” by the Italian composer Giovanni Sollima, to which Mr. Sheronick added dazzling improvisations.

By STEVE SMITH
New York Times
Published: November 21, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/
top

Lark Ascending
The Lark Quartet rocks the house with a tour-de-force performance
By Daniel Felsenfeld
On stage Reviews
Strings Magazine February 2007

It is little wonder that the Lark Quartet, quick on its way to becoming on of the premiere “edgy” ensembles, takes to music that blurs the boundaries between concert and pop fare because it functions like a rock band. Whereas many a quartet aims to be a potent singular instrument (the Emerson and Juilliard and Kronos quartets come to mind), some are a concatenation of distinct personalities (Ethel, perhaps) that coalesce inton one. The Lark’s November 19 concert at Merkin Concert Hall in New York City underscored this fact.

The forthright first violinist, Maria Bachmann, is clearly the group’s leader, with a sexy soloist’s approach to her chair, nicely paired with the energetic ballast of Deborah Buck, whose incisive second fiddle comes off like a rhythm guitar. Balanced by Kathryn Lockwood’s full viola tone (a keyboardist?) and Astrid Schween’s assured, silken cello (the rhythm section), the Lark is a force-of-personality quartet, a force to be reckoned with.

Their most recent CD, Klap Ur Handz, is a tantalizing mix of pieces, all of which were represented at this concert. At first it seemed an odd grouping; Pulitzer-Prize-winning composer Paul Moravec’s delicate neo-classicisms against the iconoclastic Daniel Bernard Roumain’s crossovers; P.D.Q. Bach (in his more serious role as proper composer Peter Schickele) with Gershwin. Yet it was a thoughtful, intelligently planned evening of music, with enough variety to satisfy any populations: those who seek only the lyrical or the danceable or the old, you were not wanted here; the Larks, in keeping with its members’ personalities, like to mix it up.

Schickele’s Scherzo movement from his Second String Quartet – a self-declared “triple espresso” – commenced the running of the style gamut, ranging from the delicate fripperies of a waltz to the theme song to the 1960’s Batman action series, and much in between. The two Moravec pieces on the concert – Atmosfera a Villa Aurelia (an arrangement of a string trio written in praise of Rome) and Vince & Jan, composed for the now-defunct Elements Quartet’s Snapshots” project – were studies in single-mood delicacy. The Larks settled here into their role as a “proper” quartet, not feeling the need to do anything other than play these beautiful pieces straight, to heartbreaking effect.

Roumain – or DBR as he is known – is a self-declared polyglot, striving to mix many styles (jazz, hip-hip, funk, “classical”) into a musical stew, usually (but not always) written for standard chamber ensembles. His String Quartet No. 5, written as part of his series of chamber homages to Black luminaries, is about Civil Rights icon Rosa Parks. It does not lack for energy and it is idiomatically wrought for the instruments (Roumain is quite the violinist), giving the Larks plenty of material to chew on. For the final movement, the titular “Klap Ur Handz,” the group was joined by wonder percussionist Yousif Sheronick, who made the final push as spirited as DBR no doubt intended.

Stanley Silverman’s arrangements of Gershwin tunes – “Fascinating Rhythm”, “Sweet and Low Down,” and “Clap Yo’ Handz” among them – were intended as concert overtures, which explains their effectiveness: they all end with a bang! As a complete set, it tired only slightly – though the material is so excellent (and the arrangements so skilled) that it was only a minor complaint in an otherwise thoroughly enjoyable suite. Gershwin, this many years on, still captivates and surprises.

The concert closed with a real barnburner, Givonanni Sollima’s “Federico II” from Viaggio in Italia, a moto-perpetuo work that had the crowd on its feet. This was the perfect Lark closer: it mixed many cultures, allowed the quartet to display with perfect clarity the distinct personalities drawn into a single inexorable spirit, and aimed to rock the house, a task in which it succeed deftly.

Any complaints as the music’s sameness, its lack of harmonic motion, it’s relentlessness, were drowned out by the rollicking enthusiasm of both audience and quartet.
top

Lark Quartet, Making Music As Glorious as All Outdoors
By Tim Page
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 15, 2005; Page C05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/

You needed an awfully good reason to stay inside on such a lovely afternoon as Sunday's, but the Lark Quartet provided one with its free concert at the National Academy of Sciences. This polished and warmly communicative ensemble played works ranging from Beethoven to George Gershwin and didn't miss a step.

The Lark Quartet has undergone a number of personnel changes since it was founded 20 years ago and currently consists of violinists Maria Bachmann and Deborah Buck, violist Kathryn Lockwood and cellist Astrid Schween. Bachmann also maintains a solo career, yet there is no "first among equals" grandstanding when she is working with the Lark. (The late Jascha Heifetz's chamber performances often sounded like disappointed violin concertos.) To the contrary: Even though the NAS hall has rather dry and unforgiving acoustics (high notes, in particular, were uncomfortably exposed), the four women played with an organlike euphony, as though they all shared the same musical impulses and understandings and were having a great deal of fun together.

Beethoven's String Quartet in D, Op. 18, No. 3, opened the program, an early work played for once with an emphasis on melody and comfortable good spirits rather than perceived prefigurations of the "heaven-storming" romantic the composer would become. A selection of late-20th-century ragtime by William Bolcom followed, music influenced by the spirit of Scott Jopin yet suffused with Bolcom's own allusive sense of humor. The "Three Rags for String Quartet" -- "Poltergeist," "Graceful Ghost" and "Incineratorag" -- were created for piano but translate easily and well for strings.

Stanley Silverman's arrangements of "Five Songs for String Quartet" by George Gershwin followed immediately and seemingly inevitably. This sort of crossover is usually not my thing -- in general, I'd rather hear pop songs played by pop musicians, who usually do them better -- but Silverman's renditions were so deft and sympathetic and the Lark's performances so smart and urgent that the hybrid took. "Do It Again" bubbled up with Dvoraklike schmaltz while "Sweet and Lowdown" swung out with such vigor and strength that the quartet sounded like a jazz orchestra in full sway.

Ravel's wonderful Quartet in F -- a collection of four musical prisms that constantly change their hues and designs -- closed the afternoon. Simultaneously tidy and exuberant, coolly cosmopolitan and deeply sentimental, it might have been written for the Lark players, who gave it a performance of grace, proportion and burnished brilliance.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company
top

FANFARE MAGAZINE REVIEW
Robert Carl
KLAP UR HANDZ • Lark Str Qrt; Yousif Sheronick (perc)1 • ENDEAVOUR 1018 (60:45)

SCHICKELE String Quartet No. 2, “In Memoriam”: Scherzo. MORAVEC Atmosfera a Villa Aurelia. Vince & Jan: 1945. GERSHWIN (arr. Silverman) Funny Face: He Loves and She Loves. Lady, Be Good: Fascinatin’ Rhythm. French Doll: Do It Again. Clap Your Hands. Tip-toes: Sweet and Low-Down. ROUMAIN String Quartet No. 5, “Rosa Parks.” Klap Ur Handz REMIX1

This is the sort of programming a lot of groups are currently doing, mixing up styles and periods, but all with a tilt toward popular American musical traditions. It distinguishes itself from the pack, though, by both a certain savviness of programming, and fabulous performance.

The programming shows a lot of interconnections from one piece to another. Both Peter Schickele and Paul Moravec work with a language that references American lyrical streams, basically Copland and Barber, respectively. Both, however, sound quite authentic, not mere knockoffs of the sources. We’re getting to the point where we can start to hear Schickele as the serious composer he always was, despite the commercial success of his alter ego, P.D.Q. Bach. The only thing remotely 18th century about his Scherzo is a moment of clumping Haydnesque wit, but otherwise it’s full of hoedown energy (happily similar to the fire that powers the first movement of the Roumain). Moravec is a composer who’s never hid his Romantic temperament, and these two tone poems are two of his most affecting essays. Atmosfera a Villa Aureila has the richly perfumed sound one associates with both Griffes and Respighi, while Vince & Jan is a tribute to the composer’s parents, a heartbreaking ode using the song I’ll be Seeing You in All the Old Familiar Places as its cantus (incidentally, it’s inspired by a WW II photograph of the couple, and having seen it, I can attest that the resemblance between father and son is uncanny). I particularly liked these pieces because their open, less-structured form allows the composer’s natural lyricism to come through even more strongly than in some of his larger-scale, more abstract works.

From 21st-century composers who reference the early/mid 20th, we move back to the historical period. The Gershwin arrangements by Stanley Silverman are sophisticated, witty, and can get down and dirty, too. That latter quality is enhanced by the Lark’s sound, which can really dig into the bluesy qualities of the songs. Simultaneously they can make the melodies really “sing”; I’ve been a particular fan of Maria Bachmann’s playing for years, and she can get a dark mezzo-ish sound from her fiddle that grabs your attention immediately.

One of the Gershwin songs is Clap Your Hands, and the first movement of Daniel Bernard Roumain’s fifth quartet is titled “Klap Ur Handz,” in good hip-hop respelling. Throwing himself right into the current sonic maelstrom, Roumain is a multitalented musician (composer, violinist, street pedagogue, arranger, and DJ—he seems to be everywhere in New York right now, with his trademark dreadlocks). He’s a force of nature for sure, and this quartet is rather typical of the sort of classical music lots of folks are writing right now, referencing various sorts of roots traditions. What sets it apart is the seriousness of purpose it projects. The first and second movements (the latter, the Rosa Parks tribute) both rely on ostinatos to propel them, but Roumain tends to favor the passacaglia, which, with its bass-driven cycle, gives more latitude for variety above. As a result, the music’s materials are varied subtly and continuously, growing to real, not forced, climaxes that carry emotional weight. And the piece has the advantage of a serene, soft, slow third movement as an epilogue to the sound and fury. The “remix” basically consists of the first movement with rhythm tracks added, I suspect in hopes that it might work its way into some further airplay and dance floor use.

Hip, but not painfully so. The Larks have good taste in both their collaborators, the works they choose, and integrity with which they program. This is a satisfying program that should play well to any audience.
top

ALLMUSIC Review
by James Manheim

The cover art of this album, with posters of the well-coiffed Lark Quartet on a wall bearing the title "Klap Ur Handz," written graffiti-style, fairly screams the radical chic of the 1960s. The music inside, however, is better than that. Like other chamber groups in the line descended from San Francisco's Kronos Quartet, the women of the Lark Quartet set out to mix concert music with contemporary vernacular materials, and the chief attraction of this album is that they choose interesting examples of each and play them with accuracy and vigor. The program succeeds in being diverse, unexpected, and logical all at the same time. The presence of one of the "serious" works of P.D.Q. Bach creator Peter Schickele is a surprise, yet the kinetic, Slavic scherzo of his String Quartet No. 2, "In Memoriam," is an ideal overture. The quartet gets the personal lyricism of current critical favorite Paul Moravec just right. The arrangements of Gershwin songs for quartet by Broadway composer Stanley Silverman stress Gershwin's mastery of contrapuntal fundamentals, and the Lark players let the music speak for itself rather than adding the mannerisms of musicals. It is the final work, by the widely publicized young Haitian American composer Daniel Bernard Roumain, that may attract the most attention to this disc. Roumain has attempted to incorporate hip-hop influences into his music, and in the opening movement of his Quartet No. 5, "Rosa Parks," bearing the "Klap Ur Handz" title, he instructs the players to do just that in order to create a semblance of a big hip-hop beat. But that is not the only weapon in Roumain's arsenal; his second movement, "I made up my mind not to move," suggests Parks' act of defiance not with ponderous dignity but with a sharp ostinato that suggests stubbornness and confrontation. It is the final "Isorhythmiclastionistc" movement that brings sustained notes and a tragic mood. The Lark gives the work a straightforward performance that one suspects the composer, who is pictured in the cover art, must have liked a good deal. As for the general listener, anyone interested in the broad chamber music trend toward engagement with audiences will find much to enjoy in this well-executed recording.
by James Manheim
top

Other Quotes:

National Public Radio
"All Things Considered" performing music of DBR:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5191628
"Performance Today" performing music of William Bolcom:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5162536
"Performance Today" performing music of George Gershwin:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5150548

The Lark unsheathed a glittering array of timbres...they are women of extraordinary ability.
—The Washington Post

The Lark Quartet convincingly showed that grace lyricism and sense of order...were what the composer valued most highly in the end.
—The Los Angeles Times

Dynamic, accomplished and imaginative musicians.
—The Boston Globe

Those who were not completely overwhelmed by the world-class level of the Lark Quartet, should have become so during the performance.
—Main-Post, Germany

The foursome played the Brahms and Schubert as if they were new, and the Kouneva as if it were an old friend.
—Arizona Republic

No place is too remote or unlikely for the four women to draw parallels between life and music, be it at a retirement home, physics class or a concert for community members in general.
—Southeast Ohio Magazine

What [The Lark Quartet] convey in terms of sound and style betrays none of the urban-aggressive stance assumed by many of their young peers. [They] convincingly showed that grace, lyricism and a sense of order, were what [Beethoven] valued most highly at the end.
—The Los Angeles Times

The Lark's very individual performances are beautifully conceived and depend on the group's singer-like sense of instrumental coloration.
—Audio
top