Review | Bold New Sounds Outta Brooklyn, via Los Olivos

Famed and fearless string quartet Brooklyn Rider recently kicked off the Santa Ynez Concert Series boldly, tuning ears to sounds of the new, while also luminously tending the timeless grounding forces of Haydn and Beethoven. It was a grand night in Los Olivos, part of a deep and expanding musical story in progress.

Serious music has had its place in the Santa Ynez Valley, in a periodic but serious way, for several decades now. This is fundamentally thanks to the efforts of Rose Knowles, the Dunn School music teacher who launched the “Schoolhouse Concerts” series on campus, which then expanded its operations in the acoustically clement, warming environs of the St. Mark’s-in-the-Valley Episcopal Church in Los Olivos.

Knowles founded and tended the classical music series for 37 years, before her retirement and a passing of the leadership torch to Linda Stafford Burrows. Pianist and artistic director Robert Cassidy has upped the game with the series now known as Santa Ynez Concert Series. For further behind-the-scenes factoids, the new executive director is Davis Reinhart, while Burrows functions as “series coordinator,” of a smoothly run operation, humble but increasingly significant in terms of reach into the classical worldly world.

Knowles passed away in May, at age 87, and was officially paid tribute at the Brooklyn Rider concert, a musical night which would have thrilled her. Much of the series’ repertoire has leaned toward more deeply rooted and conventional programming, with exceptions. And Brooklyn Rider’s contemporary music-spotlighting menu was one of the more delectable exceptions to date.

Yes, Brooklyn is the quartet’s birthplace and home base, formed 20 years ago, and taking its name from the German expressionist collective Die Blaue Reiter (its best-known artists including Kandinsky, August Macke, and Franz Marc). BR — violinists Johnny Gandelsman and Colin Jacobsen, violist Nicholas Cords, and cellist Michael Nicolas — last played locally in 2017, at Campbell Hall, in one of a couple of concerts over the years pairing them with kamancheh player Kayhan Kalhor. The group also landed at Music Academy of the West’s Hahn Hall in 2013, on a typically balanced program of music by Mozart, Béla Bartók, and gifted in-house composer/violinist Jacobsen. 

The quartet’s reputation for embracing, and helping to nurture, the new has continued apace. The centerpiece of this Friday night concert was a set of ink-still-moist, newly commissioned works under the general and socially inclined umbrella title Citizenship Notes. From the stage, Cords spoke of the “flattened hierarchy” of Haydn’s quartet music, and true to the very nature of the string quartet itself. He related that democratic ideal to the concept behind Citizenship Notes, engaging music which expresses ways to “explore questions of citizenship and democracy in the 21st century.”

That idea was translated into particular musical terms through each composer’s distinctly different means. Angelica Negron questions linguistic imperialism with Our Children Speak Spanish and English, combining ghostly tones and abstracted children’s voices, with a suspended, questioning air. Jazz clarinetist and genre-crossing composer-thinker Don Byron’s gamey String Quartet No. 3 variously and cleverly channels the influences of Carl (Looney Tunes musical genius) Stalling, Prokofiev, and Lalo Schifrin — why not? 

Most potently, Ted Hearne’s We Are Working Tirelessly for a Ceasefire encapsulates Gazan genocidal horrors, but subtly, through disjointed phrasings and a mounting sense of urgency, with abrupt dynamic shifts and an implied evocation of life during wartime. After a dramatic violin climax, a low sludgy drone continues on, like the drone of dread and impending destruction. 

Jacobsen’s creative handiwork, tied to the citizenship theme, was heard here through an inventive rethought arrangement of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin,’” wrapping the familiar theme in fresh, new and mysterious terms. Think of it as an anthem recast as a deconstructed tone poem. 

Lest anyone would think that this quartet’s command leans only in the direction of contemporary ideas and new vistas, their polished and passionate readings of Haydn’s Quartet in F Minor to open and a powerful gust of Beethoven’s String Quartet in C Opus 59, No. 3 after intermission reminded us of the over-arching and trans-historical musical vision of the group.

Ironically, or not, the two pillar composers in the string quartet repertoire were presented in a semi-role reversal situation, counter to the stereotypes of Haydn as genteel classical model and Beethoven the turbulent romantic. The Haydn in this case tilted towards a more somber demeanor, whereas Beethoven’s opus teems with life-affirming gusto and a senses-dazzling, furious yet graceful finale. 

The Rider behaved accordingly, with fine attention to detailing and the innate spirit of the scores. That’s the way they roll, whatever the music in front of them and us.

Next up on the S.Y.V. series docket is a concert embodying a central linkage to the Music Academy of the West, on October 25. This concert features the Academy’s vocal department co-head, mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, violist Richard O’Neill (MAW faculty member and now part of the Takács Quartet, which performed in this series just in January), and the considerable pianist Robert Cassidy himself. 

Something good’s always cooking, serious music-wise, in this church, over the hill and not so far away. See syvconcerts.org for more information and tickets.