By Chip Chandler — Digital Content Producer
Harrington String Quartet will feature the world premiere of a new Samuel Jones composition at its season-ending concert Friday.
The quartet commissioned the composer to write his first string quartet, which it will debut at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Amarillo Botanical Gardens, 1400 Streit Drive. Tickets are $20. Call 806-651-2840.
"He always wanted to write a string quartet but never really had the chance because he's primarily an orchestral composer," cellist Emmanuel Lopez said.
Jones, after a long career at Rice University, now lives in the Seattle area. He has a long history with Amarillo's classical music scene, dating back to 1992, when he was commissioned by Amarillo Symphony to write his Symphony No. 3, Palo Duro Canyon. The symphony debuted his Roundings: Musings on Texas New Deal Murals during its 1999-2000 season, and it continues to perform his works regularly.
"It's a very conversational work," Lopez said. "He achieved a tremendous thing, which is to have all of the instruments basically in a dialogue. Sometimes, it's ebullient. Sometimes it's introspective. But it's always a conversation."
The traditional four movements each are introduced thematically similar slow sections: "I think this helps the audience to segue between movements in a fluid kind of way," Lopez said.
Expect virtuosic elements in the first, third and fourth movements, Lopez said, though he added that the slow, tango-like second movement may well be the quartet members' favorite movement.
The concert — which also features Rossitza Jekova-Goza on violin, Vesselin Todorov on viola and newest member Evgeny Zvonnikov on violin — also will include Anton Webern's Slow Movement, "a very romantic work ... hugely expressive and poetic," Lopez said; and Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky's String Quartet No. 2.
Chip Chandler is a digital content producer for Panhandle PBS. He can be contacted at Chip.Chandler@actx.edu, at @chipchandler1 on Twitter and on Facebook.
