Alabama String Quartets (Birmingham Art Music Alliance)

Recorded in 2017, this compendium of contemporary, Alabama-born, chamber music composers presents a diverse range of musical styles, with several compositions having been derived from poetic sources. The Amernet String Quartet performs music by a dozen living composers. These are all world-premiere recordings.
Cynthia Miller (b. 1950) opening triptych Bird Quartet (2016), based on poems by Mary Oliver, each of which appeals to the attractive and threatening aspects of Nature.
Brian Moon (b. 1975) offers a brief, one-mvmt Quartet No. 2 (2007). Moon’s other piece Lines and Curves (2001) is his first attempt at the string quartet medium. An idée fixe emerges from the viola, and the piece proceeds rhythmically in playful, variegated gestures.
Monroe Golden (b. 1959) wrote Twine ‘Mid the Ringlets in 2012. Golden likes to manipulate the overtone series provided by four stringed instruments. The tune itself is a 19th Century folk air, here treated with open strings and harmonics. Eerie effects.
Lawen Brianna Ware (b. 1994) conceived the Ascension for String Quartet as memoriam for the fatal Challenger explosion of 1993. The shuttle mission’s astronaut victims continue their eternal ascent in spirit, Heaven-sent.
Matthew Scott Phillips (b. 1977) composed his String Quartet No. 4 in the spirit of mythology, seeking a resolution to the dissonance created by competing tones E and E-flat. We hear only mvmt 1, in which no peaceful, final cadence occurs.
Andrew Raffo Dewar (b. 1975) has his 2003 String Quartet performed. Aleatory in performance, the instrumentalists may alter the micro-tones, tempos, and fermatae according to taste and context, despite the original six pitches that establish the bases of the microtone series. Polytonal and polyrhythmic, the experience proves wayward, a floating ad-lib experience.
Tom Reiner (b. 1969) has representation in his brief Tempus Fugit (2014), and the longer 2016 Ketiga. The former exploits a 4-note motif in modal terms that recalls an unexpected snowstorm in usually sunny Florida. The word “ketiga” refers to the Malay word for “Third,” the number of this quartet, set in rondo form.
Mark Lackey (b. 1966) wrote Quartet for Strings in 2016. His work is in three movements, the first quite classical and accessible, in rhythmically active tremolos and pizzicatos. The extended second movement, “Turn,” opens mysteriously, establishing pedal points while individual instruments add effects. Misty and intense, the music proceeds in fragments and sonic impulses. The latter part seems lyric in minimalist terms. The last section, “Rock,” has a martial tone, whirling and repetitively driven.
Michael Coleman (b. 1955) fashions String Quartet No. 1 in one mvmt, consisting of quick outer sections and two contrasting, slow, inner sections.
Holland Hopson (b. 1971) draws on the imagery of a painting, the 1997 Hummingbirds of Enrique Martinez Celaya. Hopson’s Follows from Hummingbirds offers a series of flighty gestures meant to capture the exquisitely fast and balanced motions of the tiny bird. The composer calls it “a passing thought, a ghostly memory.”
Chris Steele (b. 1980) creates a three-mvmt meditation on mortality: Imagery: Thomas Hardy on Death, based on poems by the British author., each poem brief but compressed in its contemplation. A common motif runs through each movement, a kind of solemn trope on the main idea.
Joel Scott Davis (b. 1982) produces the most substantive work, his three-mvmt Vespers, String Quartet No. 1. Again, inter-related motifs infiltrate each mvmt, based on the evening prayer service.