- August 17, 2024 -

I was fortunate to be invited to play for an event with a string quartet I'm part of called "The Dream String Quartet". We were requested to play music from the Americas, which initiated us to do some digging. So the music search began.

We had to include the iconic work that demonstrates the feeling of being on a train through the United States; Fourth movement of Dvorak's American String Quartet. Also, a wonderful piece that includes such a playful and melodic texture. There is European musical inspiration in the construction of it, however, the bouncing harmony from the second violin and viola, in the beginning, is just so fun you can't help but bounce along with it!

Additional pieces of music we included were some American Folk/Fiddle tunes: Billy Lowground, Old Joe Clark, and Pigs Foot. As a classically trained violinist, this encouraged me to pull the reigns back and just enjoy it. Our first violinist, Ken Kuo, did a fantastic job improvising over us and making it more fiddle-like.

Our violist, Daniella Angulo Martinez, suggested a work called Suite Colombiana no.2 by Gentil Montana and the Fernando León Rengifo version, specifically the last movement titled Porro. A great work that is inspired by Columbian dance music. Since there were multiple repeated sections, we took inspiration from the alterations Cuarteto Q-Arte used. This included artificial harmonics, glissandos, Sul Ponte, piano the first time and forte the second time, and small pizzicato or arco location alterations.

We also included a song that Ken wrote, inspired by a composition assignment he had to make a minute long, called Minute Minute (The first minute meaning tiny). Ken is a Jazz violinist, so this was very jazzy and used fun rhythmic patterns/entrances and multiple pitches outside the key signature. He has written many other pieces for us that have combined jazz with other styles of music, which has been a pleasure to perform and record! If you're interested, check out his Instagram @kenkuoviolin.

Luckily, we found two beautiful string quartet works by a composer named Jose L. Elizondo. Both were commissioned by other musicians and were inspired by dance and folk music from Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. The first piece is called Danzas Latinoamericanas and the second is titled Estampas Mexicanas. I am overjoyed to be able to play such fantastic pieces of music! I've played larger works inspired by Latin American culture, but these created their own space with just four instruments. Due to it being set up for a string quartet, it is much more intimate; meaning we had to focus on what each movement was portraying to connect with each other and create that story. He added recordings of them on his website - I highly recommend checking them out! He has other instrumentations for them, too, that make the pieces even more fun.

I am very thankful for this experience and hope this brought inspiration to the audience and to you! Diving into these different styles is a great challenge and fun! I wholeheartedly believe that incorporating classics with newer pieces that range in style will bring more interest to new and old audience members, especially musicians.

Interested in hiring the Dream String Quartet and what we're doing? follow us on Instagram @dream.quartet