Missing Piece Presents: Third Stream (Music for String Quartet)

Missing Piece is proud to announce its concert "Third Stream" which will feature the Chicago premieres of Bronzeville native Leroy Jenkins' Themes & Improvisations on the Blues and Gunther Schuller's String Quartet No. 4 as well as Symbology by Nicole Mitchell. Third Stream is a term used to refer to music that is neither classical nor jazz, or both classical and jazz, or music that doesn’t try to fit one label or the other. The term Third Stream was coined by Gunther Schuller. This program represents an integrated approach to music that combines the "streams" of both classical and jazz, notated music and improvised music, and offers opportunities for new relationships between performers, composers, and genres. Contemporary music ensemble Missing Piece was founded by violinist Dan Galat and cellist Kelly Quesada. For Third Stream, they will be joined by violinist Myra Hinrichs and violist Seth Pae. Seth Pae is a multi-instrumentalist and composer based in Chicago, performing with Chicago Sinfonietta, Lyric Opera and D-Composed (sethpaemusic.com). Myra Hinrichs is a member of Chartreuse, and has appeared with other ensembles including dal niente, 3+1 Quartet, Mucca Pazza, mocrep, the Morton Feldman Chamber Players, and a.pe.ri.od.ic. To learn more about Missing Piece, visit www.missingpiecemusic.com. Leroy Jenkins’ Theme and Improvisations on the Blues was first performed in New York’s Carnegie Hall by the Kronos Quartet in 1986 and has not yet been performed in Chicago. Jenkins (1932-2007) was a violinist who grew up in Bronzeville, going to DuSable High School. Leroy Jenkins performed with the Ebenezer Baptist Church orchestra and was tutored by their music director Dr. O. W. Frederick. After attending music school at Florida A&M, he returned to Chicago and taught music in CPS schools. He was an early member of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians), a collective of experimental musicians, started in Chicago in 1965. Myra Hinrichs, performing on violin in these concerts, is doing doctoral research on Leeroy Jenkins’ improvisational style. Gunther Schuller (1925-2015) was a Pulitzer Prize winning American composer who coined the term “Third Stream” in 1957 to refer to music that was grounded in both European Classical and Jazz traditions. Schuller's 4th String Quartet was commissioned by Brian Sands in honor of his parents and in memory of renowned violinist Felix Galimir; the Juilliard String Quartet gave the work its world premiere in Detroit in 2002 and went on to perform it around the world including at Lincoln Center in New York. Sands will be in attendance at the concerts and will speak briefly about the work's background. The third work on the program, Symbology, an interpretation of a graphic score by Nicole Mitchell (1967-), current member and former chairwoman of the AACM. Graphic scores use pictures and text as notation, rather than standard music notation, which thus allows for more room for interpretation by the performers. There will be two public performances of "Third Stream" in Chicago. The first will take place Saturday, Nov. 11 at 8:00pm at The First Presbyterian Church of Chicago in Woodlawn (6400 S. Kimbark Ave.) and tickets are pay-what-you-can. Tickets can be purchased here or at the door. The second performance will be Sunday at 7:30pm at The International Museum of Surgical Science in Lincoln Park (1524 N. Lake Shore Dr.) and tickets are $20. Tickets can be purchased at the museum website, www.imss.org, or at the door. In addition to the public performances, Missing Piece will perform this program at schools, adding an educational outreach component to this project. To learn more, you can visit www.missingpiecemusic.com.

Event Links

Tickets: https://go.evvnt.com/2056133-1

Website: https://go.evvnt.com/2056133-3

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