Arts & Events

AROUND AND ABOUT MUSIC: Lafayette String Quartet at the Berkeley City Club Play Music by Schubert, Dvorak & Berkeley Composer David Jaffe

Thursday February 20, 2014 - 08:43:00 PM

The Lafayette String Quartet--the only all-female musical ensemble still comprised of its founding members--will play Schubert's String Quartet No. 13 in A minor, "Rosamunde;" Dvorak's viola quintet, op. 97, the "Ämerican;" and the US premiere of Berkeley composer David Jaffe's "Fox Hollow" for Berkeley Chamber Performances at the Berkeley City Club, Tuesday, February 25 at 8 p. m. A complimentary wine and cheese reception with the musicians will follow the concert. 

David Jaffe commented on "Fox Hollow": "Named after the Fox Hollow Folk Festival, which I participated in as a teenager, held on the Beers family homestead in upstate New York from 1966 till 1980 ... purely acoustic, no electricity ... The piece has four movements--different moods and different times of day, beginning with early morning and ending with an all-night campground jam session ... Each movement is structured around open strings of a different folk instrument: banjo (Appalachian modal tuning), guitar, mandolin and fiddle--'Sawmill Tuning' (banjos at breakfast), 'Mid-day Blues' (guitar in the heat of the day after a night without sleep), 'Natural Amphitheater' (unamplified concerts on a terraced hillside) and 'Campground Cacophony Under the Stars' (multiple overlapping jam sessions expand and recede until the dawn, when it all starts again.)" 

The Lafayette String Quartet, now in residence at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, was founded in 1986 by members of the Renaissance City Chamber players in Detroit: Ann Elliott-Goldschmidt and Sharon Stanis, violins; Joanna Hood, viola; and Pamela Highbaugh Aloni, cello. Joining the Quartet for the Dvorak quintet will be Pamela Freund-Striplen on viola, artistic director of the Gold Coast Chamber Players from Orinda. 

Tuesday, February 25 at 8, Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Avenue between Dana and Ellsworth. $25; high school students free; post-high school students, $12.50. 525-5211; berkeleychamberperform.org