Today – in place of the originally planned Hoheikan Concert – experience this ambitious performance project featuring a PMF alumna!
In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, 5 young musicians in London during the city’s lockdown composed, recorded, and released 1 piece for string quartet each day, from March 31 until June 18, after the lockdown had finally ended. Here you can experience this ambitious project in its entirety, spanning 80 days and 80 individual short works, giving voice not only to their struggles in a difficult time, but also to their hope.
Composed by: Joaquim Badia
With performances occasionally centered on improvisations by Cecilia Bignall
Isolated Quartet
Lyrit Milgram, violin / PMF 2018
Alexandra Lomeiko, violin
Jossalyn Jensen, viola
Cecilia Bignall, cello
With appearances by:
Julian Schlootz, double bass
Daniel Tancredi, double bass
Martin Adámek, clarinets
Joaquim Badia, piano
Ralph Wyld, percussion
Musings for Isolated Quartet - 1 to 40
Musings for Isolated Quartet - 41 to 80
from Joaquim Badia:
One might think that every musician's passion for the art form is unconditional, that it doesn't matter whether or not we're working towards a specific concert or commission. While this is true to varying degrees for each musician, our connection with music, as professional players and composers, has become almost exclusively an active one; we compose, we play chamber music, we play in orchestras, we teach, we sing in choirs, we accompany... We might listen to music or go to a concert when we have a free evening, but paid work usually fills up most of our days, so what do we replace all that time with, now that most of our concerts and other engagements have been cancelled? It was quite a shock to find ourselves free from the worries of constantly preparing for the next thing, and this is where this project came in: I made a commitment to my colleagues to deliver a score every morning before 9am. They then made a commitment to record it and send it back every day before 4pm. I would then put it all together and release it in the evening. This kept us all busy and in touch with music and our instruments in a practical way. With these pieces, I also hoped to capture my thoughts, feelings, new situations we found ourselves in, special holidays, birthdays, anniversaries... A recollection of all we were living and going through during lockdown, in the hope that we would end up with a set of haikus for quartet, connected by their contrast, that can serve as a musical journal of this time.
from Lyrit Milgrim:
Being a part of this project was a real saviour for me in a time when my days were mostly empty and the future of music looked rather bleak. I made a commitment to these four musicians and even though there were many difficult days when I didn’t even want to unpack my instrument, knowing that I needed to record that morning’s musing, motivated me to keep going and reminded me that my violin was actually my friend and an extension of myself.
For 80 days we persevered through the lockdown and though we were physically apart, we were connected through music.
I am so grateful to those that followed all throughout the 80 days and from their words of encouragement and positive energy.
Here’s hoping things return to normality soon, or at least some semblance of it and that we can meet in person soon to do a live concert of these 80 miniature quartets!
*All live PMF 2020 concerts, including the "PMF Hoheikan concert" listed below, have been cancelled.
