Mivos Quartet

performing the works of contemporary composers and presenting new music to diverse audiences

Sat., Oct. 8, 2022
Doors at 8pm | Show at 8:30pm
Wind River
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$22 General / $11 Members
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The Mivos Quartet, “one of America’s most daring and ferocious new-music ensembles” (The Chicago Reader), is devoted to performing works of contemporary composers and presenting diverse new music to international audiences. Since the quartet's beginning in 2008 they have performed and closely collaborated with an ever-expanding group of international composers representing a wide aesthetic range of contemporary composition. 

Mivos Quartet


The members of Mivos are violinists Olivia De Prato and Maya Bennardo, violist Victor Lowrie Tafoya, and cellist Tyler J. Borden. Mivos is invested in commissioning, premiering, and growing the repertoire of new music for string quartet, striving for rich collaborations with composers over extended periods of time. Recently, Mivos has collaborated on new works with Jeffrey Mumford (LA Philharmonic/Library of Congress), Michaela Catranis (Fondation Royaumont), Chikako Morishita (rainy days festival), George Lewis (ECLAT Festival Commission), Sam Pluta (Lucerne Festival Commission), Eric Wubbels (CMA Commission), Kate Soper, Scott Wollschleger, Patrick Higgins (Zs), and poet/musician Saul Williams. For this work and the continuation of it, the quartet was the recipient of the 2019 Dwight and Ursula Mamlok Prize for Interpreters of Contemporary Music. 

Beyond expanding the string quartet repertoire, Mivos is committed to working with guest artists exploring multi-media projects and performing improvised music. Mivos has worked closely with artists such as Cécile McLorin Salvant (Ogresse), Ambrose Akinmusire (Origami Harvest), Ned Rothenberg, Timucin Sahin,  Nate Wooley, and most recently guitarist, composer, and 2019 MacArthur Fellow, Mary Halvorson.

Mivos has performed to critical acclaim on prestigious series such as Noon to Midnight (USA), Lucerne Festival (CH), Jazz at Lincoln Center (USA), the New York Phil Biennial (USA), Wien Modern (AT), the Darmstadt Internationalen Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (DE), rainy days festival (LU), Asphalt Festival (DE), HellHOT! New Music Festival (Hong Kong), Shanghai New Music Week (CN), Música de Agora na Bahia (Brazil), Aldeburgh Music (UK), and Lo Spririto della musica di Venezia (IT). 

In addition to their performance season, Mivos is committed to the education of young composers and string players, and is regularly the quartet in residence at the Creative Musicians Retreat at the Walden School (USA) and the Valencia International Performance Academy and Festival (ES). The quartet has conducted workshops at Columbia University, Harvard University, Boston University, UC Berkeley, US San Diego, Duke University, Royal Northern College of Music (UK), Shanghai Conservatory (China), University Malaya (Malaysia), Yong Siew Toh Conservatory (Singapore), the Hong Kong Art Center, and MIAM University in Istanbul (Turkey) among others. Along with their work at educational institutions, Mivos grants the Mivos/Kanter String Quartet Composition Prize, a yearly award to support the work of emerging and mid-career composers residing in the USA, and the I-Creation prize, a competition for composers of Chinese descent worldwide.



chroai:tetrarchords revives ancient Greek musical ideas using contemporary methods. The invented scales that form the tuning system for the piece were constructed using the three tetrachord genera (diatonic, chromatic, and enharmonic) distinguished by ancient Greek music theory. The scales gradually transition from one to the next using common tones as pivot points, resulting in a journey of intervallic nuances, or chroai, that exist within the framework of whole number ratios.
Marguerite Brown (b.1990) is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist who explores new mediums, forms, and performance practices with an emphasis on unorthodox approaches to tuning and temperament. In her compositions, algorithms often provide a framework for indeterminate parameters to unfold, where performer control and composer control play an equal role in realizing the vision.

Marguerite received first place in the 6th International Microtonal Guitar Competition (composition category) with her piece “Solo (Daisy)” which she performed on a guitar refretted in an original 11-limit just intonation tuning system.

Her other work for refretted guitars was recently published in the microtonal journal Edition Zalzal, as well as presented at the 2021 21st Century Guitar Conference and the 2021 Pacific Pythagorean Music Festival. Marguerite was also recently awarded the Mivos/Kanter String Quartet Prize for her string quartet in just intonation titled “chroai: tetrachords”, which will be performed in New York City during Mivos Quartet’s 2022-23 season.

Marguerite holds a BM in music composition from Cornish College of the Arts (2013), a MA from the University of California, Santa Cruz (2019), and is currently a PhD student in music composition at the University of California, San Diego.

Mivos Quartet

performing the works of contemporary composers and presenting new music to diverse audiences

Sat., Oct. 8, 2022
Doors at 8pm | Show at 8:30pm
Wind River
Add to Calendar
$22 General / $11 Members
Buy Tickets

Program

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Chamber Music
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