Mivos Quartet @ Ateneo Musical del Puerto

19:00 - free and open to the public

Music by Edric Saphire, Annabel Punzel, Jacob Elkin, Peter Damon-Cronmiller, Alyse Murray, Nicholas Miller, Gabriel Mininberg, Matthew Tirona, Elysia Tran, Barry Sharp, and faculty member José Javier Peña Aguayo

MIVOS QUARTET

Olivia de Prato, William Overcash, violins;
Victor Lowrie Tafoya, viola; Nathan Watts, cello

PROGRAM / PROGRAMA

EDRIC SAPHIRE: Santa Ana

“Santa Ana” is inspired by a unique weather phenomenon in Southern California. Santa Ana winds are hot gusts that originate from the desert and cause extremely dry conditions and a risk of wildfires on the coast. The desert winds can often be exciting for beach goers living on the coast because it provides a stark contrast from the humid, Mediterranean climate that they are used to experiencing. The sensation of two different climates clashing was created using tone rows and extended techniques in a tonal setting. The forceful and chromatic opening statement of the prime form of the row is meant to depict the wildness and unpredictability of the desert winds. The prime form is developed in a two-part canon that grows in intensity to reflect the increase in heat and pressure that the winds experience as they come down from the mountains. Eventually, the contrapuntal lines grow into four-part harmonies that comprise every note of the row. An unusual harmonic landscape is achieved when a rich tonal landscape is constructed out of the row, creating the sensation that the piece is driving towards a destination that is certain but unpredictable. Fugal passages and a faster tempo depict the intense heating and rapid disbursement of the winds as they reach the coast and reduce humidity levels to below ten percent. The intensity of the passage is increased when the dynamic is raised from forte to fortissimo, conveying the arrival of high winds and brush fires. The piece makes a final climactic ascent in intensity before it resolves to near silence, reflecting the calm that comes when a flame has exhausted all of its energy.

ANNABEL PUNZEL: Juna's Flight 

I wrote Juna’s Flight for this festival during my last semester of university. The previous year, I had taken a year off from school to receive treatment for a chronic illness, so I would be finishing my degree a year later than expected. It was the worst year of my life. I spent most of it in and out of hospitals, lost a very close friend of mine, and sobbed every day because I didn’t want to be alive anymore. I was in so much pain and so deeply depressed. I wasn’t really capable of doing anything at all, let alone writing music.

After about a year, I finally found a medical treatment that gave me relief and helped me heal. I was determined to return to school the following year and finish my degree. My health was not perfect, and I was still undergoing treatment, but I finally felt like I had been brought back to life. I was able to see my friends again, smile, laugh, go to class, and finally live a more normal life without so much pain. Juna’s Flight was one of the first pieces I wrote after going nearly a year without being able to write. I think it encapsulates the feeling of healing after the darkest chapter of your life and finally finding hope again.

JACOB ELKIN: String Quartet Nº2 – I.

The first movement of my second string quartet performed tonight is written using a 72 EDO system within tonal constructs created by approximating whole number ratio overtones and undertones. The introduction uses a scale, which cannot be transposed, of alternating steps of 13 12th-tones and 9 12th-tones to introduce every pitch in the system with no repetition. The changing meter in this section rhythmically reflects the relationship between these pitch steps. The first theme uses microtonal pentatonic scales which adjust with each measure by 12th-tone fluctuations, giving a subtle sense of instability. The second theme uses sections of the introductory scale in mostly five and six note chords in a contrasting lento. The development combines microtonal systems and uses borrowed pitches freely. The recapitulation maintains a more stable microtonal system, but is in a pitch center a sixth tone higher than the exposition, until the second theme which is transposed up a perfect fourth. Key harmonic moments reference the overtone series throughout. While my first string quartet dealt primarily with the crisis of the absence of God, the second considers God as a cosmic horror, uncaring and beyond comprehension. The thematic material between the two is related.

PETER DAMON-CRONMILLER: Pythian Transcriptions; Or Phoebus and the Satyr

While my music is usually defined by textural superimposition whose material is informed by my transcription of early recording practices, this string quartet is my attempt to explore the superimposition of transcription itself to achieve lesser textural, but greater semiological complexity. Most significantly, I have achieved this by creating a musical ‘future tense’ in this piece’s A sections through my depiction of a fictionalized account of the Oracle at Delphi (a.k.a. Pythia) relaying Apollo’s famed musical battle with the Satyr, Marsyas. These narrations are then followed by accounts of the battle itself in the more lyrical B sections, culminating in a rupture of reality and narration in my treatment of Marsyas’ gruesome death, drawing on Ovid’s and Apollodorus’ accounts. Hopefully, this piece’s incorporation of novel methods of musical signification and ekphrasis results in the kind of uncanny, asynchronous, and divine experience that might have seized Pythia herself at the height of her Apollonian frenzy.

ALYSE MURRAY: iN(.muNi(ac|.n

Inspired by the paintings of Spanish artist Juana Francés (1924-1990), iN(.muNi(ac|.n (“Incomunicación”) is a composition that relies on external data and its transformation into unsatisfactory and incomplete musical concepts. The piece is divided into six sections, each modeled after different works created by Francés, labeled and pictured below:

Names of paintings ordered from “left to right” and “top to bottom”: Homínidos Angélicos (Angelic Hominids); Cometa IV (Kite IV); Hombre y Ciudad (Man and City); Fondo submarine (Bottom of the Sea); La Paloma (The Dove); Incomunicación (Incommunication).

Each of the above paintings demonstrate Francés’s compositional style, interest in mixed media, and involvement in the Abstract Expressionism movement. In iN(.muNi(ac|.n, the titles of these pivotal works have been put in a cryptogram,
generating melodies that are heard and altered throughout the work. iN(.muNi(ac|.n is a composition that is empty, unsatisfactory, and melodically confusing. However, this unfinished quality brings about an appreciation for silence and sounded response.

JOSÉ JAVIER PEÑA AGUAYO: Perfiles de la obediencia

In Perfiles de la obediencia ("Profiles of Obedience"), the aim is to offer a network of perspectives on an agonistic discourse between movement and sound — ranging from elements of joint and synchronized fixation of bodily movement and musical textures, to coordinated musical improvisation driven by arm and bow gestures, as well as various distributions and dissolutions of the hierarchy between body and sound, and among the participants. In this way, the outcome is a sequence of phasings and phase shifts of a kind of folk fantasy, drawing as models on elements that can be observed in traditions such as certain musical theaters of Africa and Asia, as well as certain dance and music traditions of the Caribbean. The textures start compressed in time and register in response to collective movements of the quartet, subsequently transitioning through dynamic changes toward the independence of the polyphonic lines and the diversity of individual interactions between bow movements with sound masses and silence portraying members of the quartet as co-creators of the sonic result, improvising through the superposition of rigid patterns and freely compatible gestures.

NICHOLAS MILLER: Europa

Take Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Donald Trump to the Hague and try them for war crimes. Free Lebanon and free Palestine. This piece grew out of four months I spent living in Beirut in 2019, a trip I took to Tyre, and seeing images in the media in 2026 of many of the places I visited reduced to rubble by Israeli bombs. If you ask many people what the pinnacle of European civilization is, you might hear something like the late Beethoven string quartets. Europe is named after the mythological Europa, a princess from Tyre. This is also a piece about cows.

Some of the main sources for this piece are Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Slavoj Žižek’s essay “European Union, Seventy Years Later”, Sabine Hossenfelder’s Youtube essay “Why I Fear the Future”, Timothy Morton’s book Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence, John Coltrane’s harmonic matrices, and Bernard Herrmann’s score for The Day the Earth Stood Still.

GABRIEL MININBERG: Anisotropies

Anisotropies were irregularities of density in the early universe shortly after the Big Bang, and are ultimately responsible for the series of events that resulted in the formation of the world we live in today. These disturbances were slightly different depending on the direction in which they were observed, which is the idea that inspired this piece. Anisotropies plays with rhythmic perspective and irregularity using pulsations of different lengths and claves that change our perspective on a given meter or rhythm. The piece is also driven by a curiosity for composite melodies and rhythms and the tensions and illusions that can form between them, much like the disturbances, distortions, and obstructions in the line of sight when observing the night sky.

MATTHEW TIRONA: the passage of time

This rhapsodic work documents my experiences and feelings with the four seasons, and how their contrasting natures help me landmark and process the passage of time.

ELYSIA TRAN: a bad kid | into mother's arms

“a bad kid | into mother's arms” unfolds in two parts. The first section employs the turbulent and rebellious nature that often springs out of our parental relationships. The second section features a recurring "mother's lullaby", reflecting on the ever-comforting feeling of being hugged by one's own mother.

BARRY SHARP: Twelve chords for string quartet

“The Chord! The Chord! The Chord!” as General Douglas MacArthur declared to the West Point Corps of Cadets in 1962—had they all been music theorists.

“The Chord!” in the context of my work requires some clarification though. It cannot be just one pitch, because all you would have is the octave in that case. While I am a big fan of octaves, they can feel a bit lonely. They might need a friend. Let’s add a second pitch right next to it. Mildly dissonant, sure, but not quite enough material to extract a full-length piece for my purposes. A third pitch, then, the traditional definition: “The Chord! The Chord!” by god! This third note needs a little more space from the first two to start building harmony, but it still feels like we haven’t been given enough to chew on. ‘Least for me. It’s at a slightly more spaced-out, four-note chord where things start to get interesting. You can now extract all kinds of textural, melodic, and harmonic materials. In this piece I used 12 woven together, in all 12 keys–not like J.S., more like La Monte (I usually focus on just one in the past decade of escapades).

Perhaps “The Chord!” is not quite enough a compelling anecdote. So I offer one more if my dear listener did read this far. I really thought about 12 fabrics or “walls of sound.” Yes…like a Drum Corps or Marching Band. No…not like Pink Floyd. But…kind of, actually. Not single bricks though, never bricks. I’d say a pile of leaves, pallets, glitter, ocean, or whole brick walls.