Currents

Currents assembles five works around a single idea: movement carried from one place to another.

Two take the idea literally. Guillermo Laporta's Brown Leaves Moving (2018), from the suite AWAVE first performed in Queens that year, begins with the players offstage. They walk on as they play, over an electronic background, so the ensemble forms in front of the audience instead of waiting for it. Eric Moe's Laminar Flow in Upsidedown Creek takes its title from the term in fluid dynamics for movement in smooth parallel layers with no mixing between them, the opposite of turbulence. It enters the season through CreArtBox's open Call for Scores.

The other three works trace a current of a different kind, the one running between Brahms and the Schumanns. Joseph Joachim received the dedication of Clara Schumann's Three Romances in 1853, and it was Joachim who read the viola part of Brahms's A minor Trio in rehearsal, the scoring heard here. Clara Schumann gave the first public performance of her husband's Piano Quartet at the Leipzig Gewandhaus in 1844, the work that closes the evening.

Josefina Urraca, piano. Emilie-Anne Gendron, violin. Matthew Cohen, viola. Julia Yang, cello. Video art by Guillermo Laporta. Approximately 60 minutes, played without intermission.