Quartet Metadata: From Bagpipes to Shooting Stars

String Quartet New York, Fordham University’s annual series featuring contemporary works by New York City composers, will take place Friday, November 16, at Fordham’s Lowenstein Center. Admission is free. The concert is curated by Lawrence Kramer, Distinguished Professor of English and Music at Fordham. The 2018 installment of String Quartet New York features two world premieres: “The Night Sky,” by Kramer, who is also a renowned musicologist, and “Short Quartets,” by up-and-coming composer Jeff Myers. “Umoja,” an original groove-based composition by the Grammy-nominated Valerie Coleman, draws on the tradition of call and response. Matthew Welch’s “String Quartet No. 2” expands on the melodic sensibility of the Highland Bagpipe. “I like to think of this program as going from bagpipes to shooting stars,” says Kramer. “While the music is remarkably diverse, representing four utterly different stylistic and expressive worlds, the elements all come together to offer something for everyone.”

Quartet Metadata is a string quartet based in New York City dedicated to the music of today. Founded in 2010, the quartet consists of Lynn Bechtold and Hajnal Pivnick, violins; Carrie Frey, viola; and Jisoo Ok, cello. Together they have performed on the Concrete Timbre Series, as well as at Fordham, Fashion Institute of Technology, the Whitney Museum, Yale University, and the Juilliard School.