Modernist Masterworks!

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Momenta Festival X: Flutist Roberta Michel with the Momenta Quartet

Dear friends,

It's hard to believe the holiday season is almost over, and with it the barrage of fundraising emails, of which this is one of them!

On behalf of all of the Momenta Quartet, I firstly want to thank all of you who have so generously supported us so far. We are doing well, thanks to your support, but if you were still contemplating a donation by year-end, we have not quite made up for those elusive grants we did not receive this season. 

If you've been reading all these emails, you've heard from everyone in Momenta except for me, the founder and violist. We all know that there are countless string quartets out there, so what distinguishes the Momenta Quartet? Beyond our championship of living composers, what puts Momenta on the map is our commitment to unearthing modernist masterworks. Without Momenta, for example, what would happen to the legacy of the important historical Mexican composer Julián Carrillo (1875-1965) whose 13 string quartets we are currently recording for Naxos? 

Your gift to Momenta helps ensure a place for the music of modernist masters like Carrillo in an increasingly inclusive classical music canon.

Momenta's advocacy of neglected twentieth-century masters extends beyond Carrillo. We recently gave the New York premiere of Il Tessuto d'arabeschi (1979) for flute and string quartet by the Parsi/English composer Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892-1988). Just think about that for a moment - how could it be that a piece from 1979 by such a renowned international composer had yet to be performed in New York City, of all places?

Moreover, how did such an important contribution to the repertoire for flute and string quartet manage to be neglected for so long? When flutist Roberta Michel suggested this piece to me, I was immediately so excited about it that I built an entire Momenta Festival program around it, "Tutti Flutey." The idea was not only to give Sorabji his day in the New York sun, but also to raise awareness of the chamber repertoire for flute and strings. As the title suggests, every piece had a flute in it, starting with Mozart's celebrated D major Flute Quartet and ending with Sorabji.

And as of today, we have added to the available performances of Sorabji's music on YouTube. When Roberta introduced us to this piece, there were very few recordings available online, and I think all of them were with a conductor. That's another reason to support Momenta - we don't need a conductor to perform Sorabji!

If you missed the "Tutti Flutey" concert, here is the newly released Sorabji video. (Other tracks are coming soon....)

Thanks for listening, thank you for your support, and enjoy the last few days of the holiday season,

Stephanie