A Far Cry | Horizons

Horizons sweeps listeners along panoramic landscapes of plains, tundra and wind. Lei Liang’s Gobi Gloria captures the dance and rituals of Southern Mongolia through long-chant and regional folk songs born out of a mesmerizing single melody intertwined with gentle silences that open the work. In John Luther Adams’ The Wind in High Places we hear the Aeolian harp strummed by the winds of the Alaskan tundra, with the quartet treated as a single shivering and shimmering 16-string instrument. Finally, the wind picks up to the rhythmic whirls and whispers of Thomas Sleeper’s String Quartet No. 2. Sleeper considered the sound and pulse in the natural world as “the grand improvisation of our brief lives.” A moment of stillness in the second movement is joined by the murmurs of a Tibetan prayer bowl.

Musical Program
Lei Liang | Gobi Gloria for String Quartet
John Luther Adams | The Wind in High Places
Thomas Sleeper | String Quartet No. 2, “Bergonzi”