July 26: Tina Davidson's New Album Barefoot featuring Jasper String Quartet and Natalie Zhu out on New Focus Recordings
Composer Tina Davidson Announces New Album Barefoot
Featuring the Jasper String Quartet and Pianist Natalie Zhu
“vivid ear for harmony and colors” – The New York Times
Release Date: July 26, 2024
New Focus Recordings
CDs or press downloads available upon request.
www.tinadavidson.com | www.newfocusrecordings.com | www.jasperquartet.com
Composer Tina Davidson will release her next album, Barefoot, on July 26, 2024 on New Focus Recordings. Davidson is a highly regarded American composer who creates music that stands out for its emotional depth and lyrical dignity. Lauded for her authentic voice, The New York Times has praised her “vivid ear for harmony and colors.” Opera News describes her music as "transfigured beauty.” Tina Davidson has been commissioned and performed by leading ensembles and artists including the National Symphony Orchestra, The Philadelphia Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, OperaDelaware, VocalEssence, Kronos Quartet, Cassatt Quartet, and GRAMMY® Award-winner Hilary Hahn. Barefoot features a selection of her chamber music performed by the Jasper String Quartet (violinists J Freivogel and Karen Kim, violist Andrew Gonzalez, and cellist Rachel Henderson Freivogel) and pianist Natalie Zhu.
The new album highlights five of Davidson’s chamber music pieces for varying combinations of strings and piano, composed over the past decade, including Tremble (2013) for violin, cello and piano; the title track Barefoot (2011) for violin, cello, viola, and piano; Wēpan (2014) for string quartet and piano; Hush (2017) for violin and piano; and Leap (2021) for violin, cello, viola, and piano.
All of the works are deeply personal for Davidson. She explains in her note for the album:
I am a composer who writes about where I am at that moment. For years I composed about a sense of connectedness to something larger than myself. But in this decade of life, I find myself returning to quieter issues. I have softened and come home to myself.
The works on this album are about personal thoughts and feelings. Barefoot is that urge to be outside and have contact with the earth; the urge to dance and turn and spin before God. Tremble is the sense of excitement, fear or love—the thing that causes the body to resonate in anticipation. Leap, written during the Covid pandemic, is where I found myself when I was pushed off the edge by circumstance. Hush is the remembrance of soothing a child. “Hush,” I say, “Hush, hush.”
Wēpan is just weeping; endless weeping.
I am, I suppose, always looking to understand myself. I pry into these words, digging deeper into what it is for me to tremble, weep or leap – how I see myself, now, as I move forward.
Barefoot follows the publication last year of Davidson’s memoir Let Your Heart Be Broken (Boyle & Dalton), which was praised in The Marginalian as “a consummate read in its entirety,” written with “uncommon sensitivity and poetic insight.” Let Your Heart Be Broken traces Davidson’s extraordinary life in equally lyrical language, juxtaposing memories, journal entries, notes on compositions in progress, and insights into the life of an artist – and a mother – at work. VAN Magazine calls the book, "an unequivocally poetic memoir on love, loss, and music." Review copies of Davidson’s memoir are available upon request.
About Tina Davidson: Over her forty-five-year career, Tina Davidson has been commissioned by well-known ensembles such as National Symphony Orchestra, OperaDelaware, Roanoke Symphony, VocalEssence, Kronos Quartet, Cassatt Quartet, and public television (WHYY-TV). Her music has been widely performed by many orchestras and ensembles, including The Philadelphia Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Relâche Ensemble, and Orchestra 2001. Davidson was commissioned by GRAMMY® Award-winning violinist Hilary Hahn as part of her 27 Encores project. The work, Blue Curve of the Earth, was released on Deutsche Grammophon in 2013, and again in 2018 on Hahn’s new album, Retrospective.
Long-term residencies play a major role in Davidson’s career. As composer-in-residence with the Fleisher Art Memorial (1998-2001), she was commissioned to write for the Cassatt Quartet, Voces Novae et Antiquae, and members of the Philadelphia Orchestra. She also created the city-wide Young Composers program to teach inner city children how to write music through instrument building, improvisation, and graphic notation. She was composer-in-residence as part of the innovative Meet The Composer “New Residencies” with OperaDelaware, the Newark Symphony and the YWCA in Delaware (1994-97). During this residency, she wrote the critically acclaimed full-length opera, Billy and Zelda, as well as created community partner programs for homeless women, and with students at a local elementary school.
The recipient of numerous prestigious grants and fellowships, Davidson was the first classical composer to receive a $50,000 Pew Fellowship. She has been awarded four Artist’s Fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, CAP grants from the American Music Center and numerous Meet the Composer grants. Her work, Transparent Victims, was selected by the American Public Radio as part of the International Rostrum of Composers, held at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.
Born in Stockholm, Sweden, Tina Davidson grew up in Oneonta, NY and Pittsburgh, PA. She received her BA in piano and composition from Bennington College in 1976 where she studied with Henry Brant, Louis Calabro, Vivian Fine and Lionel Nowak. She currently lives in Lancaster PA.
About the Jasper String Quartet: Celebrated as one of the preeminent American string quartets of the twenty-first century, the prizewinning Jasper String Quartet (J Freivogel and Karen Kim, violins; Andrew Gonzalez, viola; Rachel Henderson Freivogel, cello) is hailed as being “flawless in ensemble and intonation, expressively assured and beautifully balanced” (Gramophone). The Quartet is highly regarded for its “programming savvy” (Cleveland Classical) which strives to evocatively connect the music of underrepresented and living composers to the canonical repertoire through thoughtful programs that appeal to a wide variety of audiences.
A recipient of Chamber Music America’s prestigious Cleveland Quartet Award (2012), the Quartet’s playing has been described as “sonically delightful and expressively compelling” (The Strad). The ensemble has released eight albums, including its most recent release, Insects and Machines: Quartets of Vivian Fung (2023) which Strings Magazine praised as being “intensely dramatic throughout demonstrating both their advocacy of new music and their transcendent mastery.” The Quartet’s 2017 release, Unbound, was named by The New York Times as one of the year’s 25 Best Classical Recordings.
The Quartet regularly collaborates with some of today’s leading artists, including tenor Nicholas Phan, clarinetist Derek Bermel, pianists Amy Yang, Natalie Zhu and Myra Huang, and the Jupiter String Quartet. Collaborations and commissions with living composers include Lera Auerbach, Derek Bermel, Patrick Castillo, Vivian Fung, Brittany J. Green, Aaron Jay Kernis, Akira Nishimura, Reinaldo Moya, Michelle Ross, Caroline Shaw and Joan Tower.
The Jasper String Quartet is named after Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada and is represented by Suòno Artist Management.
About Natalie Zhu: Known for captivating interpretations of a wide repertoire, pianist Natalie Zhu is the recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Musical Fund Society Advancement Award, the Andrew Wolf Memorial Chamber Music Award, and Astral Artists Award. The Philadelphia Inquirer heralded Zhu in recital as a display of “emotional and pianistic pyrotechnics”. Selections from her live performances are frequently broadcasted on Performance Today.
Natalie Zhu has performed throughout North America, Europe, and Asia as a soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. She has given solo recitals at the Carnegie Hall in New York City, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Seattle Chamber Music Society, New York’s Steinway Hall and Merkin Hall, Portland Piano Festival in Oregon, Munich’s Herkulessaal in Germany and Beijing and Shanghai Concert Hall in China. Zhu has performed with the Daedalus, Dover, Miami, Vermeer Quartets, and collaborated with members of the Guarneri, Orion, Mendelssohn, Ying Quartets, as well as the Beaux Arts Trio and Time for Three. She has been a touring recital partner with renowned violinist Hilary Hahn, including recording Mozart’s Violin Sonatas for Deutsche Grammophon. In 2023, Ms. Zhu recorded with cellist Clancy Newman on the Albany album “From Method to Madness: American Sound.”
As an active chamber musician, she has appeared in Marlboro Music Festival, Tanglewood Music Festival, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Curtis-On-Tour, Seattle Chamber Music Society, Maestro Foundation Concert Series, Skaneateles Festival, Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival, Bay Chamber Concerts, Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, Chicago Chamber Musicians. Since 2009, she has been the artistic director of the Kingston Chamber Music Festival in Rhode Island.
Natalie Zhu began her piano studies with Xiao-Cheng Liu at the age of six in her native China and made her first public appearance at age nine in Beijing. At eleven she emigrated with her family to Los Angeles, and studied with Robert Turner and Ming-Qiang Li. By age fifteen she was enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music where she received the prestigious Rachmaninoff Award and studied with Gary Graffman. She received both a Master of Music degree and Artist Diploma from the Yale School of Music where she studied with the late Claude Frank. Natalie Zhu lives in the Philadelphia suburbs with her husband and daughter.
Track List:
Barefoot
Music by Tina Davidson
The Jasper String Quartet | Natalie Zhu, Piano
New Focus Recordings | Release Date: July 26, 2024
1. Tremble (2013) for violin, cello and piano [9:49]
J Freivogel, violin; Rachel Henderson Freivogel; cello; Natalie Zhu, piano
2. Barefoot (2011) for violin, cello, viola and piano [10:13]
J Freivogel, violin; Andrew Gonzalez, viola; Rachel Henderson Freivogel; cello; Natalie Zhu, piano
3. Wēpan (2014) for string quartet and piano [9:16]
J Freivogel, violin; Karen Kim, violin; Andrew Gonzalez, viola; Rachel Henderson Freivogel; cello; Natalie Zhu, piano
4. Hush (2017) for violin and piano [9:18]
J Freivogel, violin; Natalie Zhu, piano
Leap (2021) for violin, cello, viola and piano
5. I. Uncertain Ground [5:16]
6. II. Sudden Passage [5:51]
J Freivogel, violin; Andrew Gonzalez, viola; Rachel Henderson Freivogel; cello; Natalie Zhu, piano
Total: 50:13
Recorded at Gore recital Hall, University of Delaware, September 16-17, 2023
Recording Producer & Engineer: Andreas K. Meyer
Assistant Engineer: Ben Hadley
Post Production & Mastering at Swan Studios, NYC (www.swanstudios.nyc)
Photo credits:
Tina Davidson © Nora Stultz
Jasper String Quartet © Lisa-Marie Mazzucco
Natalie Zhu by Joie Elie Photography
Art for Cover: Tina Davidson, tinadavidson.com
Cover Design: Shane Keaney, shanekeaney.com
Layout & typography: Marc Wolf, marcjwolf.com
Commissions: Leap was commissioned by The Nioka Trust.