Del Sol String Quartet: “Soundings” No. 3

This is the third and final concert in the Del Sol String Quartet’s 2013-14 Home Season “Soundings” Project–a series of three, innovative performances by the Quartet at the Center for New Music in San Francisco in November, March and May.
For this project Del Sol presents newly-commissioned works from three Bay Area emerging artists, each one inspired by and paired with the work of an established contemporary composer, which Del Sol will explore in depth on the program. Each concert will focus on sources of inspiration for the music, such as place, history, or story, and include performance and discussion with the audience in an informal and intimate venue. Audience participation will be encouraged throughout the evening, and a post-concert reception follows each performance.
Concert No. 3 features “String Quartet No. 14” (1998) by renowned Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe (b. 1929) with didjeridu accompaniment by Stephen Kent. The piece is based on a legend of Australian colonial history, “Quamby Bluff,” according to which government soldiers drove a tribe of Aborigines to the edge of a cliff in the highlands of northern Tasmania, forcing them to choose between being shot or jumping.
Sculthorpe’s compositional style is rooted in classical forms and shaped by his interest in the indigenous music of his native land and the Pacific Rim. Of his 18 string quartets, four include accompaniment on the didjeridu, an Australian indigenous instrument made from the hollowed out trunk of a tree. Sculthorpe’s focus on writing music that reflects the socio-environmental character of Australia has made him the country’s best-known composer and “the voice of the nation.”
The evening also will include the world premiere of a short work inspired by Sculthorpe’s piece, commissioned from emerging composer Nils Bultmann, an award-winning, classically-trained violist, improviser and composer who has written works in a variety of styles. Bultmann has served as Composer in Residence with the Berkeley Symphony and is Guest Lecturer in the Music Department, UC Berkeley, from which he recently received his PhD.
A post-concert reception will allow the audience members to meet the performers and composer Nils Bultmann.