…Part of the Grand Teton Music Festival’s winter concert series, the keyboardist (Michael Stephen Brown) and the (Harlem Quartet) will perform works by Amy Beach, Billy Strayhorn, Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann and others starting at 7 p.m. in the Center Theater.
Brown and the Harlem Quartet — IImar Gavilán and Melissa White, violins, Jaime Amador, viola and Felix Umansky, cello — have shared stages a bunch of time, playing the Schumann’s Piano Quintet Op. 44 many times, Brown said.
“We’re friends and colleagues,” he said. “We’ve also playing in different combinations. Melissa White and I played in Poland together.”
But for their first appearance in Jackson Hole they will also present something new: American composer Beach’s 1929 String Quintet.
He called it “incredibly special, harmonically” and “beautiful and fresh sounding.”
“It’s an unusual way to start a program,” he said.
…After the Beach, the quartet will take over the stage for two works, “Cuarteto en Guaguancó,” a driving, rhythmic work composed by the first violinist’s father, Guido Lopez-Gavilán, and an arrangement of the Billy Strayhorn classic “Take the A Train.”
“They duo it phenomenally,” Brown said of the Harlem Quartet’s “A Train.”
Consisting of past winners of the prestigious Sphinx Competition, the Harlem Quartet has been lauded for it’s “panache” (The New York Times) and hailed for “bringing a new attitude to classical music” (Cincinnati Enquirer). Founded in 2006, the quartet won the Best Instrumental Composition Grammy in 2013 for “Mozart Goes Dancing.” The group is currently quartet-in-residence at the John J. Cali School of Music in Montclair, New Jersey, and the Royal College of Music in London.
After the quartet’s two pieces, Brown will return to the piano bench for another music story: back-to-back performances of “Songs Without Words” by Delphine Von Schauroth (1813-1887) and Mendelssohn’s Rondo Capriccioso.
…Friday’s concert will conclude with another quintet for strings and piano, Schumann’s Opus 44, a work of romantic virtuosity for all participants.
