Dean: Quartet No. 2 for Strings and Soprano, "And once I played Ophelia
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Orion String Quartet
Tony Arnold
The Orion String Quartet is one of the leading chamber music ensembles on the classical music scene today. Admired for diverse programming that juxtaposes masterworks of quartet literature with key works of the 20th and 21st centuries, the Orion provides singularly rich dimension to its music-making. The members of the Orion String Quartet—violinists Daniel Phillips and Todd Phillips, brothers who share the first violin chair equally, violist Steven Tenenbom, and cellist Timothy Eddy—have worked closely with illustrious musicians, such as Pablo Casals, Sir András Schiff, Rudolf Serkin, Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zukerman, Peter Serkin, members of the ensemble TASHI, and the Beaux Arts Trio, as well as the Budapest, Végh, Galimir, and Guarneri String Quartets. The Orion String Quartet are season artists of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
In the 2021–22 season, they appeared in CMS’s Winter Festival, performing selections from Wynton Marsalis’s At the Octoroon Balls and Milhaud’s La Création du Monde, and repeated this program at the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts in Virginia in the spring. The Quartet’s concerts last season also included appearances with the Phoenix Chamber Music Society and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society with music by Haydn, Bach, Bartók and Beethoven, and with Linton Chamber Music in Cincinnati, in collaboration with Anthony McGill for Reger’s Clarinet Quintet and quartet works by Beethoven.
In the 2022–23 season, the Quartet performed Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 16 in a winter concert for CMS, and appears again with both the Phoenix Chamber Music Society and Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, with works by Mozart, Schubert, and Brahms.
During the Quartet’s 30th-anniversary season in 2017–18, the group celebrated at principal chamber music series throughout North America. They played the complete Beethoven string quartets in a series of six concerts at Mannes School of Music, where they held the position of Quartet-in-Residence for 27 years; at CMS they performed in an all-Haydn program and presented a contemporary music concert of works written for the group, including the world premiere of Sebastian Currier’s Etudes and Lullabies commissioned by CMS, David Dzubay’s “Astral” Quartet No. 1 for Strings, and Brett Dean’s Quartet No. 2 for Strings and Soprano, And once I played Ophelia. New music specialist Tony Arnold joined the Orion as vocal soloist for this performance.
The Orion String Quartet has contributed to the development and expansion of the string quartet repertoire through commissions from composers Chick Corea, David Del Tredici, Alexander Goehr, Thierry Lancino, John Harbison, Leon Kirchner, Marc Neikrug, Lowell Liebermann, Peter Lieberson, and Wynton Marsalis. As a hallmark of its 25th anniversary, the group collaborated with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in a two-week project that featured music by Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Ravel, and Beethoven. WQXR’s The Greene Space produced a live broadcast of the collaboration, including the performance and a discussion among members of the Orion Quartet and choreographer Bill T. Jones.
Heard frequently on National Public Radio’s Performance Today, the Orion has also appeared on PBS’s Live from Lincoln Center, A&E’s Breakfast with the Arts, and ABC’s Good Morning America.
The Orion String Quartet was established in 1987 and takes its name from the Orion constellation as a metaphor for the personality each musician brings to the group in its collective pursuit of the highest musical ideals.
Tony Arnold is internationally acclaimed as a leading proponent of contemporary music in concert and recording, a “convincing, mesmerizing soprano” (Los Angeles Times) who “has a broader gift for conveying the poetry and nuance behind outwardly daunting contemporary scores” (Boston Globe). Her unique blend of vocal virtuosity and communicative warmth, combined with wide-ranging skills in education and leadership, was recognized with the 2015 Brandeis Creative Arts Award, given in appreciation of “excellence in the arts and the lives and works of distinguished, active American artists.” Her extensive chamber music repertory includes major works written for her by Georges Aperghis, Eric Chasalow, George Crumb, Nathan Davis, Brett Dean, Jason Eckardt, Gabriela Lena Frank, Fredrick Gifford, David Gompper, Jesse Jones, Josh Levine, David Liptak, Philippe Manoury, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Christopher Theofanidis, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, and John Zorn. She is a member of the intrepid International Contemporary Ensemble and enjoys regular guest appearances with leading ensembles and presenters worldwide. With more than 30 discs to her credit, she has recorded a broad segment of the modern vocal repertory with esteemed chamber music colleagues. She received a 2006 Grammy nomination for her recording of George Crumb’s Ancient Voices of Children (Bridge Records). She is a first-prize laureate of the Gaudeamus International and the Louise D. McMahon competitions. A graduate of Oberlin College and Northwestern University, Arnold was twice a fellow of the Aspen Music Festival as both conductor and singer. She currently teaches at the Peabody Conservatory and the Tanglewood Music Center.
Recorded live in the Daniel and Joanna S. Rose Studio January 25, 2018.
Video directed by Tristan Cook.