July 11: Telegraph Quartet Performs on Morris Museum’s Celebrated Lot of Strings Music Festival – Part of Morris Museum’s Summer Outdoor Concerts on the Back Deck Series
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Telegraph Quartet Performs on
Morris Museum’s Celebrated Lot of Strings Music Festival
Part of Morris Museum’s
Summer Outdoor Concerts on the Back Deck Series
Thursday, July 11, 2024 at 7:30pm
Morris Museum’s Outdoor Concerts on the Back Deck
6 Normandy Heights Road | Morristown, NJ
“soulfulness, tonal beauty and intelligent attention to detail ... an incredibly valuable addition to the cultural landscape.” – San Francisco Chronicle
Morristown, NJ – On Thursday, July 11, 2024 at 7:30pm, the San Francisco-based Telegraph Quartet (Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violins; Pei-Ling Lin, viola; Jeremiah Shaw, cello), a group described by The Strad as having "precise tuning, textural variety and impassioned communication,” returns to the Morris Museum (6 Normandy Heights) to perform on the Museum’s celebrated Lot of Strings Music Festival, part of its annual Outdoor Concerts on the Back Deck series, in music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Kenji Bunch, and Antonin Dvořák. Patrons are invited to bring their chairs and picnics to the Morris Museum’s elevated parking deck, and find out why The New York Times said it made it “Joyous to be in Jersey” as they watch the sunset on the hills of Morris County during the concert. Guests may arrive at 6pm to set up and enjoy their refreshments.
The Telegraph Quartet, which last performed as part of the Lot of Strings Music Festival in 2022, formed in 2013 with an equal passion for standard and contemporary chamber music repertoire. Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as, “an incredibly valuable addition to the cultural landscape” and “powerfully adept… with a combination of brilliance and subtlety,” the Telegraph Quartet was awarded the prestigious 2016 Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the Grand Prize at the 2014 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition.
At the Morris Museum, the award-winning quartet will perform an array of works shaped by a mix of personal relationships, cultural experiences, and stylistic adventurousness. The last of Beethoven’s first six string quartets owes its wit, levity, and exploratory nature to Beethoven’s teacher Josef Haydn, the grandfather of the quartet. Though Beethoven and Haydn often clashed over their styles, later in life, Beethoven would acknowledge his musical debt to Haydn and the evolution of his quartets from their Haydn-esque beginnings. American composer Kenji Bunch’s third string quartet, Apocryphal Dances, is inspired by 17th century French dance music but the twelve minute work is not written with ardent fixation on the style. Bunch’s intent is for a light and lively experience between the performance of the quartet and the listening audience. Shifts in the melody, chord progressions, and rhythmic structure lead the work to reflect qualities of various musical styles. Dvořák crafted his String Quartet No. 14 in A flat-major –– his final chamber piece –– in two stages: starting around March 1895 when he was scheduled to depart the United States to return to his homeland and then revisiting the work in December 1895, after writing his Quartet in G Major. He finished the A flat-major in just under three weeks and the music largely reflects Dvořák’s spiritual temperament during this time, which was one of uplifting positivity and joy.
The Telegraph Quartet’s latest album, 20th Century Vantage Points: Divergent Paths, was released in 2023 on Azica Records. The first in the Telegraph’s three-album series focused on string quartets of the first half of the 20th century, Divergent Paths explores the bewildering and unbridled creativity of the period through the music of Arnold Schoenberg and Maurice Ravel, whose music on this album weaves threads of great contrast and surprising similarity. The album has been met with critical acclaim, with The New York Times reporting, “[I]n the Schoenberg, they achieve something truly special, meticulously guiding its often wayward progress. At times Schoenberg makes the four strings sound almost orchestral, but the Telegraph players can also make his contrapuntal tangles radiantly clear. Every minute of their account sounds gripping and purposeful, which is one of the highest compliments you can pay the piece.”
More about Telegraph Quartet: The Telegraph Quartet has performed in New York City’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Chamber Masters Series, and at festivals including the Chautauqua Institute, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, and the Emilia Romagna Festival. They have collaborated with pianists Leon Fleisher and Simone Dinnerstein; cellists Norman Fischer and Bonnie Hampton; violinist Ian Swensen; composer-vocalist Theo Bleckmann; St. Lawrence Quartet, and the Henschel Quartett. A fervent champion of 20th- and 21st-century repertoire, the Telegraph Quartet has premiered works by John Harbison, Osvaldo Golijov, Robert Sirota, and Richard Festinger. In 2018 the Quartet released its debut album, Into the Light, featuring works by Anton Webern, Benjamin Britten, and Leon Kirchner on the Centaur label. The Telegraph Quartet released its new album, 20th Century Vantage Points: Divergent Paths––which features Ravel’s renowned quartet and Schoenberg’s first quartet––on August 25 via Azica Records.
Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Quartet is currently on the chamber music faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music as the Quartet-in-Residence and has given master classes at the SFCM Collegiate and Pre-College Divisions, through the Morrison Artist Series at San Francisco State University, and abroad at the Taipei National University of the Arts, National Taiwan Normal University, and in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Telegraph has also served as artists-in-residence at the Interlochen Adult Chamber Music Camp, SoCal Chamber Music Workshop, and Crowden Music Center Chamber Music Workshop. In November 2020, the Telegraph Quartet launched ChamberFEAST!, a chamber music workshop in Taiwan and in fall 2020, Telegraph launched an online video project called TeleLab, in which the ensemble collectively breaks down the components of a movement from various works for quartet.
For more information, visit www.telegraphquartet.com.
For Calendar Editors:
Concert details:
Who: Telegraph Quartet
Presented by Morris Museum’s Lot of Strings Music Festival
What: Music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Kenji Bunch, and Antonin Dvořák
When: Thursday, July 11, 2024 at 7:30pm
Where: Outdoors on the Morris Museum’s elevated parking deck, 6 Normandy Heights Road, Morristown, NJ
Tickets and information: morrismuseum.org/telegraph
Description: The award-winning Telegraph Quartet, described by The New York Times as being “full of elegance and pinpoint control,” is presented by the Morris Museum, as part of its Lot of Strings Music Festival and annual Back Deck outdoor concert series, on Thursday, July 11, 2024 at 7:30pm. The Bay Area ensemble will perform an outdoor concert featuring works that are greatly shaped by the composers’ personal experiences and relationships, written from the 19th to the 21st centuries: Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 6 in B-flat Major, Op. 18 No. 6 (1798-1800), Kenji Bunch’s String Quartet No. 3 (2017), and Antonin Dvořák’s String Quartet No. 14 in A-flat Major, Op. 105 B. 193 (1895).
Short description: The Telegraph Quartet, which is described as “full of elegance and pinpoint control” (The New York Times), is presented by the Morris Museum for The Back Deck Series as part of its Lot of Strings Music Festival, on Thursday, July 11, 2024 at 7:30pm. The ensemble will perform the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, Kenji Bunch, and Antonin Dvořák.