Symphony For String Quartet and Forest Project
Project String Quartet is delighted to announce our upcoming project:
Symphony for String Quartet and Forest
Supported by the National Forest, the exciting project will take place across Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Staffordshire; working with 5 schools and over 500 students in the National Forest to understand more about nature, trees and wood that surrounds their local area, and its connection to the instruments of the string quartet and classical music.
PSQ will work alongside the Kyan Quartet to present a range of educational presentation concerts and performance workshops, culminating in an outdoor public performance in the National Forest itself; commissioning young composer Jacob Fitzgerald to create a work performed by string quartet and the students on found objects from the forest such as twigs, branches, roots and leaves.
Working With Schools
PSQ will work alongside exceptional young professional quartet, the Kyan Quartet, to present an engaging half-day of musical activities to each of the 5 schools. The sessions feature an educational presentation concert and performance workshop, both of which are highly interactive and encourage response and input from the students. All aspects of the project are catered to any level of musical ability, including none at all, allowing the project to involve students at any stage of their musical development.
Educational Presentation Concert
100 students from each school will enjoy high-quality performances of well-known chamber music pieces that relate to nature, including examples from Haydn string quartets “Sunrise”, “Lark”, Bird”, “Frog”, extensive use of birdsong in works of Dvorak and the inspiration of the English countryside on the music of Elgar. PSQ Director Graham Oppenheimer and the Kyan Quartet will explore the history of the ensemble’s instruments and the materials that make them, providing an insight into the relationship between the string quartet and music with the forest and natural world that surrounds us. Students are highly encouraged to ask questions of the performers and engage with subject material in these extremely open and informative sessions.
Performance Workshop
In these sessions, a smaller group of 20-30 students will have the opportunity to work directly with the Kyan Quartet to perform the newly composed work. Exploring the sounds of the forest by rustling, hitting and scraping their found forest instruments, students will learn how to perform as an ensemble; bolster their listening skills, and enjoy playing in a completely new and innovative approach to chamber music.
Outdoor Performance
Following on from the educational concerts and workshops at each school between, delivered by PSQ and Kyan Quartet, the public outdoor performance in the National Forest will take place after the end of the school day on Friday 1 July 2022, 3pm at the Timber Festival, a three day festival of “celebration, debate and reflection in the National Forest.“
New Music Commission
The project will culminate in an atmospheric outdoor performance of a new work by award-winning young composer Jacob Fitzgerald for string quartet and forest. This will be performed by the Kyan Quartet along with the students involved in the performance workshops utilising the trees to create accompanying sounds. Jacob writes:
“When approached by Graham Oppenheimer about this commission I was instantly drawn in. The image of a string quartet in a wooded forest clearing, surrounded by 180 school children ‘playing the forest’ was a striking one and firmly planted immediately in my mind’s eye.
Excerpt from Jacob Fitzgerald’s Symphony for String Quartet and Forest.
As the piece began to take shape, I found myself drawing on material and inspiration from all sorts of places. Quotations of some of natures’ greatest features in the Classical canon can be spotted, littered throughout, including Haydn’s Frog, Lark, Bird and Rider quartets, Vivaldi’s Goldfinch and elements drawn from Bartók’s insect music. Grid references of some of The National Forest’s key landmarks have also been translated into pitch series and used for much of the melodic material, including the National Memorial Arboretum and the Forestry Centre at Rosliston.
The actual structure of Symphony for String Quartet and Forest is much like a symphony, with four movements that map out the structure of a tree, taking us on a journey upwards, starting at the Roots, then Trunk and Branches, finishing with the more delicate, florid texture of the Leaves.”
