Smith Quartet
Ian Humphries, violin | Rick Koster, violin | Nic Pendlebury, viola | Deirdre Cooper, cello
Now into its third decade the Smith Quartet remains at the leading edge of the new music world. It has championed the works of the world’s most celebrated composers, commissioning over 200 new pieces with recent works from Michael Nyman, Donnacha Dennehy, Joe Cutler, Tunde Jegede, Gabriel Prokofiev and the late Jon Lord. They have also worked closely with Steve Reich, most notably on his work Different Trains, performing in the BBC’s BAFTA and Emmy award-winning documentary film Holocaust – A Music Memorial Concert from Auschwitz. Filmed on location, the film marked the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The group has not only collaborated with eminent classical musicians but also with a diverse array of artists from other disciplines including rock group Pulp, Malian singer Rokia Traoré, jazz musician Django Bates and dance companies Siobhan Davies and Ultima Vez.
The quartet’s touring schedule has taken them around the world appearing in many prestigious festivals including: Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Vancouver Festival, Cheltenham and Edinburgh Festivals, La Biennale di Venezia, Jauna Muzika Vilnius, Vale of Glamorgan, the Flanders Festival Brussels and New York’s Bang on a Can Festival.
The quartet regularly records for the BBC and enjoy a productive relationship with Signum Classics. Their fourth album, Dance, was released in 2011. A collection of commissioned dances by composers from the worlds of classical, jazz, rock and world music, the album received accolades in both the national and international press. Previous albums on the Signum label include Steve Reich’s Different Trains and the complete Philip Glass quartets which led Classic FM magazine to ask ‘How long before the Kronos is labelled the ‘American Smith Quartet’? …they are ahead of the curve at generating new repertoire and taking the experimental back catalogue seriously’. Other albums of note include the complete music for piano and strings by Morton Feldman with celebrated pianist John Tilbury on Matchless; You live and learn…. Apparently by Django Bates and the hugely popular Diamond Music by Karl Jenkins on Sony.
Recent projects have included the world premiere of Michael Nyman’s 5th quartet at the Automne en Normandie Festival and a return to the Minimal Festival in Glasgow where they premiered new works by David Lang and collaborated with New York’s Bang on a Can All Stars. The Smiths also collaborated with Shobana Jeyasingh on her revival of Configurations giving performances at the Royal Opera House in London and in Sweden. Performances last season included a visit to the Dusseldorf Festival, at St John’s, Smith Square to celebrate their appointment as Associate Artists, the complete Philip Glass Quartets at St George’s Bristol as part of the Filmic Festival and the world premiere of Deirdre Gribbin’s Hearing Your Genes Evolve at the Royal Greenwich String Quartet Festival.
The 2013-2014 season includes performing Morton Feldman in Milan with pianist John Tilbury; Gavin Bryars and Stephen Montague at the Musica Electronica Nova Festival in Poland; with American indie rock band The National at Alexandra Palace; a programme of Irish contemporary music at Durham University and the world premiere of a new work by Graham Fitkin for string quartet & percussion with percussionist Joby Burgess at the Cheltenham Music Festival and St John’s, Smith Square. Plans for the 2014-2015 season include touring the project for string quartet and percussion through the UK and several appearances in Kings Place ‘Minimalism: Unwrapped’ Festival (including concerts featuring works by the American ‘Bang on a Can’ collective and a new work by Wayne Siegel) along with recording Michael Nyman String Quartets No. 4 and No. 5 on MN Records.
