San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
Spektral Quartet reaches outward
Interactive La Jolla Music Society performance will use postcards to spread messages outside the concert hall
Art and postcards. Audience and community. Traditional classical music and contemporary works. While it may seem a challenge to integrate all those elements into one concert, Spektral Quartet’s “Something to Write Home About” was created to do just that.
People attending the performance will be given pens, writing surfaces and custom-designed postcards in hopes that music inspired messages composed during the concert will be sent to friends everywhere.
San Diegans can join in when the La Jolla Music Society presents “Something to Write Home About” at the Baker-baum Concert Hall on Thursday.
“As performers, the cornerstone of our philosophy is to connect with the audience in unexpected ways,” said Spektral violinist Clara Lyon. “We come up with extra-musical events to spark curiosity in the music and create a comfortable and safe space for everyone.
“By having the audience respond to directives from the music itself, they’ll hopefully be inspired to send (the postcards) to folks in their orbit — or, perhaps, to people that they haven’t seen or spoken to in a long time. We hope it will create a little ripple effect outside the concert hall.”
The quartet has been attentive to visual art since its beginning 12 years ago. Spektral’s publicity photos often boast a distinctive flair, featuring its members in inventive poses and settings, often with different hairstyles and hair colors.
The group includes its two remaining co-founders, violist Doyle Armbrust and cellist Russell Rolen, along with violinists Lyon and Theo Espy, who joined in 2016. Spektral has regularly recruited artists to design its posters and album covers, most often from its hometown of Chicago.
For “Something to Write Home About,” visual artists from that area designed the postcards. Also in the mix are postcards by Seattlebased multimedia artist Eliaichi Kimaro.
Ironically, the first time Spektral performs in La Jolla will likely be its last. After this season, the foursome will bow out for good.
“All quartets are in a notoriously difficult business,” Lyon said. “Ours is especially difficult because we’re a nonprofit and part of our mission is to selfproduce shows here in Chicago. So, we have a lot of administrative work in addition to touring and fully producing shows here at home.”
After its final season closes, the group will complete several ongoing projects, including albums, an art film collaboration and virtual reality and web ventures.
With the disbanding of Spektral on the horizon, violinist Espy expressed feelings of both satisfaction and anticipation.
“We’re lucky to look back at the tenure of the quartet and feel great about how unified our vision has been and how many projects came to fruition in the way we wanted them to,” said Espy, who previously performed under the name Maeve Feinberg.
“It’s bittersweet and complicated. But we made these projects come to life, and that’s something that we can feel collectively proud of. We can feel emboldened to go on and do other things.”
Espy noted that “Something to Write Home About” was performed live and in person only once, at the University of Iowa, before COVID-19 pandemic restrictions stopped Spektral’s tour. The quartet realized the program fit the virtual format and presented it online several times.
The selections at Thursday’s concert will include work by well-known composers Debussy and Schubert, as well as by Arthur Russell, who died in 1992, and Tomeka Reid, an envelope-pushing Chicago cellist and composer.
“We try to bridge the tradition of a Western classical string quartet with works being written today,” Lyon said in a joint interview with Espy from Chicago.
“That is a guiding light for us. With this program, we thought it would be best to keep the music to shorter selections to achieve a greater variety.
“It’s all about trying to be as inclusive as possible in creating a real sense of community, in the room and beyond.”