The Ciompi Quartet performs with The Lark Quartet and cellist Laura Sewell and invites Andrew Waggoner to discuss and provide insight into his work for 2 quartets, inspired by the Moroccan feminist writer Fatema Mernissi.
Since its founding in 1965 by the renowned Italian violinist Giorgio Ciompi, the Ciompi Quartet of Duke University has delighted audiences and impressed critics around the world. All its members are professors at Duke, where they teach instrumental lessons, coordinate and coach chamber music, and perform across campus in concert halls, libraries, dormitories and classrooms. In a career that spans five continents and includes many hundreds of concerts, the Ciompi Quartet has developed a reputation for performances of real intelligence and musical sophistication, with a warm, unified sound that allows each player’s individual voice to emerge.
Andrew Waggoner was born in 1960 in New Orleans. He grew up there and in Minneapolis and Atlanta, and studied at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, the Eastman School of Music and Cornell University. Called “the gifted practitioner of a complex but dramatic and vividly colored style” by the New Yorker, his music has been commissioned and performed by the the Academy of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields; the Los Angeles Philharmonic; the Saint Louis, Denver, Syracuse, and Winnipeg Symphonies; the Corigliano, Miro, and Villiers, and JACK Quartets; the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble; Dinosaur Annex; CELLO; Flexible Music; Peggy Pearson and Winsor Music; Seattle Modern Orchestra; Tanglewood; Ekmeles; Ensemble Nordlys, of Denmark; and Ensemble Accroche Note, of France. He is the recipient of an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, grants and prizes from ASCAP, Yaddo, The New York State Council on the Arts, Meet the Composer, New Music Delaware, the Lee Ettelson prize from Composers Inc., a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Roger Sessions Prize for an American composer from the Liguria Study Center in Bogliasco, Italy.
The Lark Quartet has delighted audiences with its energy, passionate commitment and artistry since its inception in 1985. 2019 marks the final season of this quartet with a distinguished tradition of commissioning works from some of the country’s most celebrated composers, many of which have become mainstays of the chamber music repertoire. This history includes works such as Billy in the Darbies by William Bolcom with Stephen Salters, baritone; Scenes from the Poet’s Dreams by Jennifer Higdon with Gary Graffman, piano; Quartet no. 1 Musica celestis and Quartet no. 2 Musica instrumentalis (winning the 1997 Pulitzer Prize) by Aaron Jay Kernis; Piano Quintet by Paul Moravec with Jeremy Denk; Intarsio by Glen Velez and Big Time by Nico Muhly (commissioned by the Central Vermont Chamber Music Festival) for Lark and Yousif Sheronick, percussion.
Cellist Laura Sewell enjoys an active and varied musical career. From 2007-2016, she was a member of the esteemed Artaria String Quartet. In recent seasons, the quartet was appointed as one of Minnesota Public Radio’s ensembles-in-residence, was featured on Twin Cities Public Television’s “Minnesota Originals” series, and performed the complete Shostakovich quartet cycle to critical acclaim. Earlier in her career, Ms. Sewell was the founding cellist of the award-winning Lark Quartet. During her tenure in that ensemble the quartet won the bronze medal at the Banff International String Quartet Competition, served as the graduate string quartet-in-residence at the Juilliard School, and had a teaching residency at San Diego State University. Over the past two decades, Ms. Sewell has been on the faculties of Augsburg College, the MacPhail Center for Music, Madeline Island Music Camp, Stringwood, and the Artaria Chamber Music School.
