Welcome to the Momenta Quartet website.
We are currently hard at work on the Brazilian composer Arthur Kampela’s string quartet Uma Faca Só Lâmina (A Knife All Blade).
A note from the battlefield: it really is all blade…but well worth the struggle! Arthur considers this his most important piece so far and he has been waiting since 1998 to hear it. A few established new music quartets have almost taken it on, but we are the only ones insane enough to follow through with this. Insanity aside, we are enjoying the process of learning this music and very excited to be the first ones to get it off of the page. As it stands, the verdict is still out as to whether we will perform the whole piece this year or make it into a two-year project. So far we have put 16 hours of rehearsal into it alone, and at least another 30 hours are already scheduled – we will see how far we get!
Of course the major factors holding quartets back from learning this exciting piece are time and money. With that in mind, we are having a Kampela Fundraiser Open House on Saturday, January 30th from 4pm until midnight at our loft space in Brooklyn. In addition to delicious food and copious drinks, you can enjoy up to 6 hours of open rehearsal on Arthur’s quartet and a possible late night performance of Arthur’s avant-garde bossa novas and sambas. For a suggested minimum donation of $30 ($20 for students/seniors/starving artists), this event will be cheaper (and more interesting) than an average meal out in New York City and your money will go to an excellent cause: paying musicians to rehearse music that may never otherwise be heard! Please email us at stephanie@momentaquartet.com if you would like to be invited.
Our official world premiere of Arthur’s piece will take place on February 8th at the Cornelia Street Café and we will have the chance to play it again in New York City at the Americas Society on February 24th as part of a program featuring three works written especially for Momenta by Bolivian composers Agustin Fernandez and Cergio Prudencio and Venezuelan composer Manena Contreras.
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Beyond all of this, our biggest news is being awarded the Koussevitzky grant to commission Kee Yong Chong. See the Koussevitzky page for details. And we are now funded by the Aaron Copland Fund for Music and Meet the Composer’s Cary New Music Performance Fund..
All of the photography on this website is by John Gurrin.
