Cascade Quartet presents “Reel Time: Music from the Movies”
The Great Falls Symphony’s Cascade Quartet opens the 2018-2019 Chamber Music Series with Reel Time: Music from the Movies. Concerts are on Sunday, October 14, 2pm at the First Congregational Church UCC and Tuesday, October 16, 7pm at the University of Providence. Single admission is $15 for adults and $5 for students. Family passes are $15 and include admission for one student and one adult. Bring-a-friend packages are available online only at gfsymphony.org and include two adult admissions for $25. Four-ticket passes are available for $45 (adults) and $16 (students). Season passes grant seven admissions and may be purchased for $75 (adults) and $25 (students). All tickets, packages, and season passes may be purchased online at gfsymphony.org or at the door. For more information, contact the Symphony office at 406-453-4102 or visit gfsymphony.org.
“The intimate, heartfelt music composed for string quartet is some of the greatest art ever conceived,” cellist Thad Suits states with conviction. Barber’s String Quartet, which contains one of the most heart-rending themes ever written for strings, will be featured in the program. The work includes the famous and beloved Adagio in the second movement. It’s been used time and again in movie soundtracks, most notably Platoon. Luigi Boccherini’s String Quintet in E Major, Op. 11, No. 5 also contains a movement that has come to be known as the “Celebrated Minuet.” This graceful movement often implies an atmosphere of grandiloquence, as it does in the restaurant scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The Cascade Quartet will perform an arrangement of this piece for traditional string quartet (two violins, viola, and cello). Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is a biographical film about Japanese writer Yukio Mishima and features music by living composer Philip Glass. Glass’ String Quartet No. 3 is an adaptation of the film score for string quartet.
The Cascade Quartet is also thrilled to present Sounds for Silent Film, a new composition by Sam Krahn. This two-movement work was commissioned by the Cascade Quartet to be premiered on the Reel Time concert program. The first movement was inspired by La Mer (1895), a very short French film by Louis Lumière. Krahn explains, “The music for this film is not intentionally aligned with specific actions on the screen, only to be influenced by visual gestures...My intention is for this music to exist independently of the film and to also create a dialogue with the film when paired in live performance.” The music of the second movement is set to Spanish filmmaker Segundo de Chomón’s Les Tulipes (1907) and connects more with what is happening on the screen in the manner of the traditional film score. Krahn chose Les Tulipes for its “loose narrative and beautiful (though quickly-shifting) imagery.”
The premier of Sounds for Silent Film will be performed with a screening of the films by Lumière and Chomón. The Cascade Quartet will also perform music to accompany a screening of “The Maker”, a short animated film by Christopher and Christine Kezelos.
Reel Time: Music from the Movies with the Cascade Quartet
2pm, Sun, Oct 14, First Congregational Church UCC, 2900 9th Ave S
7pm, Tue, Oct 16, University of Providence, 1301 20th St S
ADMISSION:
Individual tickets $15 Adults / $5 Students
Season Pass $75 Adults / $25 Students (7 admissions)
Four-Ticket Pass $45 Adults / $16 Students (4 admissions)
Family Package $15 (1 student + 1 adult admission)
Bring-a-Friend Package $25 (2 adult admissions) available only online at gfsymphony.org.
Sam Krahn
Sam Krahn is a composer, guitarist, and performer. His works have been performed by members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Fidelio Trio, Ensemble Uusinta, Ensemble Dal Niente, Duo Gelland, the Artemis Vocal Ensemble, Strains New Music Ensemble, the Gregorian Singers, and many others. He has received numerous commissions to compose new works for Ed Harrison of the Chicago Symphony
Orchestra (Maraca Concerto), Duo Gelland (Butoh Study #1, Resistance/Resonance), Nexus Duo (Moon Forms), Bill Solomon (Cascade/Noise Generator), Harper College (Spring Dirge), Benjamin Cold (flux-mirror), and the Anaphora Contemporary Ensemble (String Quartet No. 1). In December of 2015, his first musical comedy, An Evening with Krampus was premiered in a 5-show run at the Phoenix Theater in Minneapolis.
He participated in the 17th World Saxophone Congress and Festival, the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, the MATA Festival in New York City, the Source Song Festival in Minneapolis, the 2015 Root Signals Electronic Music Festival, the 46th Ball State Festival of New Music and the 70th annual Cheltenham Music Festival in England. He has participated in artist residencies in 2015 at the Millay Colony in New York and Brush Creek in Wyoming. Sam was the 2017/2018 Artist in Residence at the Paris Gibson Square Museum of Contemporary Art. He received a grant from New Music USA and was a recipient of the 2017 Montana Arts Council Artist’s Innovation Award.