Aleksandra Vrebalov: ...hold me, neighbor, in this storm...
Commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by Carnegie Hall and the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, with funds from The Leading College and University Presenters Program of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the work received its world premiere performance on February 22, 2008 at Carnegie Hall.
In her program notes, the composer writes of the troubled history of ethnic intolerance of her native land and the keen memories of conflicts, some dating back half a millennium, that still blaze with intensity.
She writes:
For me, ... hold me, neighbor ... is a way to bring together the sounds of the church bells of Serbian orthodox monasteries and the Islamic calls for prayer. It is a way to connect histories and places by unifying one of the most civilized sounds of Western classical music--that of the string quartet--with ethnic Balkan instruments, the gusle (a bowed string instrument) and tapan (large double- headed drum). It is a way to piece together our identities-- fractured by centuries of intolerance--and to reach out and celebrate the land so rich in its diversity, the land that would be ashen, empty, sallow, if any one of us, all so different, weren't there.
David Harrington and Aleksandra Vrebalov
Read excerpts from email exchange during the composition & development of ...hold me, neighbor, in this storm...
