Fry Street Quartet to Release New CD

The Fry Street Quartet, the faculty string quartet in residence in the Department of Music at Utah State University, announces the release of a new CD, Voices of Modernism and the String Quartet. The project combines music that spans string quartet music repertoire — from 1700 to 2000 — with some of the most up-to-date recording technology.

 

Voices of Modernism and the String Quartet is a two-CD set that features the music of Beethoven, Stravinsky, Rorem and J. Mark Scearce. It was recorded using a variety of new technologies, including IsoMike, a technique developed by Ray Kimber of Kimber Cable.

 

“The technology used to record this music provides the best sound that you can get right now,” said quartet member Jessica Guideri. “There are only 100 CDs that have ever been recorded with this quality.”

 

Developed in the Ogden, Utah, area, IsoMike technology offers a new way of recording hard-to-record music such as orchestras, jazz bands, choirs, pipe organs, pianos, harps, ensembles and quartets, the IsoMike Web site states.

 

 

In addition to the strong technical foundation of the CD, the set was edited and mastered by the Grammy award-winning Graemme Brown. The recording was completed in a series of short, concentrated sessions in August on the campus of Weber State University, Guideri said.

 

“All the pieces on the CD are dear to our hearts,” Guideri said. “We enjoy them all and had to put them down in a recording.”

 

Selections include Beethoven’s String Quartet in A Major, Op. 18, no. 5 (1800) and String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132 (1825), as well as Igor Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for String Quartet (1914), Ned Rorem’s String Quartet no 4 (1994) and J. Mark Scearce’s String Quartet 1 (Y2K) (2000).

 

In opening his liner notes for the CD, Eric Smigel writes, “modernism is a perpetual reinvention of culture, where traditional values and new modes of thought are in a constant state of imbalance. The voice of the modern artist, then, is essentially an expression of conflict. Many composers of the modern era have addressed this conflict by way of the string quartet. ... In the five works recorded here, the members of the Fry Street Quartet engage in animated discussions scripted by four progressive composers, each of which was at a point of personal confrontation.”

 

Quartet member Guideri said the selections on the CD will expand the musical experience for many listeners.

 

“The CD contains two of the most classic works of the literature, and listeners will find that familiar,” Guideri said. “Then, there are three selections that may stretch the listeners at first, but they will learn to love them as we do.”

 

“In these five string quartets, the composers sought to resolve conflicts of the human condition, and in the process they found an artistic voice, a viable means to address the unknown,” Smigel concluded in his CD notes. “Their speechless voices, skillfully fashioned into stimulating conversations between four intelligent performers, are all heroic expressions of the modern and postmodern spirit.”

 

Voices of Modernism and the String Quartet is available through the Fry Street Quartet’s Web site. Members of the quartet thank Eric Smigel, Terril Neely, Ray Kimber and Sergio Bernal for assistance in producing the CD.

 

Members of the Fry Street Quartet include Jessica Guideri, violin; Rebecca McFaul, violin; Russell Fallstad, viola; and Anne Francis, cello.