74TH SEASON 

OF CONCERTS

MARCH 13, 2016 • NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
Photo Mary Kay Gaydos

2 • National Gallery of Art

PROGRAM

3:30 • West Building, West Garden Court

Fry Street Quartet

Robert Waters, violin

Rebecca McFaul, violin

Bradley Ottesen, viola

Anne Francis Bayless, cello

Presented in honor of Women's History Month

Laura Kaminsky (b. 1956)

Rising Tide

H2O (The Source of Life)

Bios

Forage

Societas

Amy Beach (1867-1944)

Quartet for Strings (In One Movement), op. 89

Grave — Allegro molto — Grave

Intermission

Libby Larsen (b. 1950)

Emergence

Radiant

Reactive

Rage

Resolve

Reverence

Joan Tower (b. 1938)

Night Fields
The Musicians

The Fry Street Quartet — hailed as "a triumph of ensemble playing” by the New York

Times — is a multifaceted ensemble taking chamber music in new directions. Performing

music of the masters as well as exciting original works from visionary composers of our

time, the Fry Street Quartet has perfected a "blend of technical precision and scorching

spontaneity,” writes the Strad. Since securing the Grand Prize at the Fischoff National

Chamber Music Competition, the quartet has reached audiences from Carnegie Hall to

London, and Sarajevo to Jerusalem, exploring the medium of the string quartet and its 

life-affirming potential with "profound understanding... depth of expression, and stunning

technical astuteness," according to the Deseret Morning News.

With a discography that includes a wide range of works from Haydn and Beethoven

to Stravinsky, Janacek, and Rorem, the quartet is known for being, "equally at home in the

classic repertoire of Mozart and Beethoven or contemporary music," says a review in the

Palm Beach Daily News.

The Fry Street Quartet has collaborated with acclaimed instrumentalists, including

Wu Han, Paul Katz, Donald Weilerstein, Misha Dichter, and Roger Tapping. The musicians

have commissioned and toured new works by a wide range of composers. Pandemonium

by Brazilian composer Clarice Assad received its Fry Street premiere with the San Jose

Chamber Orchestra; Michael Ellison's Fiddlin' was co-commissioned by the Arizona Friends

of Chamber Music Series and the Salt Lake City-based NOVA series; Laura Kaminsky's 

Rising Tide was commissioned especially for the quartet's global sustainability initiative,

The Crossroads Project.

After more than twenty performances in three countries, The Crossroads Project:

Rising Tide continues to resonate with audiences. This fresh approach to communicating

society's sustainability challenges draws upon all the senses with a unique blend of science 

and art and has been featured on NPR, as well as in publications by the multimedia service 

Yale Climate Connections and the New York Times.

The quartet's 2014-2015 season included the premiere of Laura Kaminsky's new

chamber opera, As One, featuring soprano Sasha Cooke and baritone Kelly Markgraff at the 

Brooklyn Academy of Music, as well as Libby Larsen's new work Emergence, which anchors 

the Crossroads Project's second chapter, Crossroads: Emergence for string quartet, film, and actor.

The Fry Street Quartet is pleased to hold the Dan and Manon Caine Russell Endowed

String Quartet Residency at the Caine College of the Arts at Utah State University. And

because you were wondering... "Fry Street" was the location of the quartet's first rehearsal

space in the Chicago neighborhood once ruled by Al Capone.

4 * National Gallery of Art

Program Notes

Rising Tide

Starting with Source of Life, I imagined an ancient landscape: dark, forbidding and foreboding, dry and dusty, with a small stream of water running through it. I saw in my mind's eye

the terrain of Armenia, flat and volcanic, with a looming Mt. Ararat far in the distance. I

wrote an imaginary folk tune that starts from nothing, like a tiny stream, and then grows, 

building to a climax as in a rushing mountain river, and then trickling away.

For Bios I wanted to create a steady pulsing throughout, the elemental pulse of life,

yet with flickers of energy bursting through, and never purely mechanical or regular, as life

is not. I then built momentum before reverting back to the open, more "floating" quality of 

the beginning.

Forage is simply a romp —the animals scurrying to find nourishment in field and

forest. There's a dance-like quality, yet also something majestic.

Societas opens with a chorale-like yearning theme, an innocent and reverential

society, serene, yet not still, gaining in intensity until it can be chorale-like no more.

A scampering dialogue follows, evoking the dizzying complexity and multilayered nature

of human existence, with all four voices in dialogue or in sync before recalling where it

came from. Program notes by Laura Kaminsky

Quartet for Strings (In One Movement), op. 89

Amy Beach was sixty-two years old when she composed her only string quartet in 1929.

Beach was America's first significant female composer and though she did have some 

chamber music scattered throughout her vast compositional output, she had never before 

taken up the venerable challenge of the quartet genre. One possible reason for the delay 

was her female status. The America of Beach's era was not yet ready to accept women in

traditionally male roles, especially those reserved for the elite. Beach's parents, and later

her husband, were careful to limit her public exposure, fearing that she might cross social 

barriers or expectations of the times. Despite the limitations put on her performing life,

which undoubtedly made it difficult for her to collaborate with professional string quartets,

Beach wrote a lot. Dozens of songs fill her catalogue, along with some chamber music, a

symphony, and a piano concerto. When the quartet music finally came, it was set in a single 

movement and based on traditional Inuit melodic material. The quartet is a wonderful blend 

of folk and progressive elements, and although it remained unpublished until the 1990s,

Beach was able to hear it one last time in November 1942 on a program that celebrated her

seventy-fifth birthday. Program notes by Jeff Counts

74th Season • 5
Emergence

Two years ago, during a visit to Utah State University, I met Rebecca McFaul and immediately connected with her intense commitment to the idea that music can act as a powerful

agent of transformation and change. She spoke eloquently and forcefully about the Fry

Street Quartet's dedication to actively making art that is relevant to the challenges of our

time, and she introduced me to the quartet's Crossroads Project, which combines music,

visuals, and writing to shine light on humanity's growing sustainability crisis. Like so many 

of us, I am extremely concerned about what we humans are doing to our natural environment, and I am eager for opportunities to use my own gifts to help. Emergence is the result

of the Fry Street Quartet's and my mutual desire to do what we can to contribute to our 

collective social conscience.

It struck me early on that the water cycle could be a useful metaphor, so I planned 

Emergence as an abstract narrative in five movements. Each movement is inspired by parts

of the water cycle: precipitation, runoff, evaporation, transpiration, and condensation. Each

movement also suggests emotion: exhilaration, joy, wonder, fear, anger, grief, regret, resolve,

and reverence.

I hoped to embrace Rebecca's philosophy about music and compose abstract

music that could place every listener inside it, both as a being interconnected with all other

kinds of beings and as individual spirits capable of reason, emotion, and action. Program

notes by Libby Larsen

Night Fields

In addition to teaching and conducting, world-renowned composer Joan Tower has always 

enjoyed the performance of chamber music. An accomplished pianist, she founded the Da

Capo Chamber Players in 1969 and has since contributed significantly to the literature of 

the string quartet, the piano trio, and virtually every other kind of intimate genre. That said,

her first string quartet, like that of Amy Beach, came rather late in 1994. By Tower's own 

account, it was a struggle. She has remarked in pre-concert comments that she should have

called the piece Nightmare instead of Night Fields, but the intense rhythmic immediacy of 

the music belies any lack of assurance. Though cast in a single movement (also like Beach's

piece), Night Fields follows a loose, three-part structure and generates several emotionally

charged atmospheres. Tower wrote that "Night Fields, my first string quartet, is dedicated

with affection and admiration to the Muir String Quartet. The title came after the work was

completed and provides an image or setting for some of the moods of the piece: a cold

windy night in a wheat field lit up by a bright full moon where waves of fast-moving colors

ripple over the field, occasionally settling on a patch of gold." Program notes by Jeff Counts

6 • National Gallery of Art

Upcoming Events of the SeventyFourth Season of The William

Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot

Belin Concerts

COMMEMORATING THE

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART’S

75TH ANNIVERSARY

US Air Force Band Airmen of Note Combo

March 17, Thursday, 12:10,1:10, and 2:10

West Building, East Garden Court

"The President's Own" Marine

Chamber Orchestra

March 18, Friday, 12:00 and 2:00

West Building, West Garden Court

US Navy Band Sea Chanters 

March 19, Saturday, 3:00

East Building Atrium

US Army Chorus and Brass Quintet

March 20, Sunday, 3:30

West Building, West Garden Court

Rachel Barton Pine

Complete Bach Sonatas and Partitas

for solo violin

March 27, Sunday, 2:00 and 3:30

West Building, West Garden Court

Washington Toho Koto Society

Traditional Japanese music

Presented in conjunction with the National

Cherry Blossom Festival

April 3, Sunday, 3:30

West Building, West Garden Court

General Information

Admission to the National Gallery of Art

and all of its programs is free of charge,

except as noted.

The use of cameras or recording equipment

during the performance is not allowed.

Please be sure that all portable electronic

devices are turned off.

Concerts are made possible in part 

through the generosity of donors to the 

National Gallery of Art through The Circle.

Reserved seating is available in recognition 

of their support. Please contact the

development office at (202) 842-6450 or

circle@nga.gov for more information.

www.nga.gov

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The department of music produced these

program notes. Copyright © 2016 Board of

Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Cover Georges Braque, Fruit, Glass, and

Mandolin (detail), 1938, National Gallery of Art,

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Back cover West Building, East Garden 

Court, Photo by Rob Shelley, National Gallery

of Art, Washington