Del Sol Quartet

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Jon Roy

Ben Johnston

press release: The San Francisco-based ensemble The Del Sol Quartet  will hold a public recital on Monday, May 21 in Madison in honor of pioneer composer, teacher and mentor, Ben Johnston, on the occasion of his upcoming induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  This free performance will be held at the First Unitarian Society (Atrium Auditorium-new section), 900 University Bay Drive, at 7PM, across from the UW-Children’s Hospital on the western edge of the UW-Madison campus. The program will feature Johnston’s two most popular string quartets, the Fourth (based on the beloved theme “Amazing Grace”) and the Tenth (also based on a popular folk melody), in addition to works by some of Johnston’s contemporaries.

Johnston, 92, has made his home in the Madison area for the past 11 years, where he continues to advance the field of microtonal music composition and performance, most notably initiated in the U.S. by music legend Harry Partch, with whom Johnston studied for several years.   Partch's seminal work, Genesis of Music, was first published in Madison by University of Wisconsin Press in 1949.  Winner of numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, Johnston spent most of his career at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. He had a significant role in some of the Contemporary Arts Festivals, which were annual events in the 1960s.   His service, as composition teacher and mentor there, led to an honorary doctorate from that institution.  He is also the author of, Maximum Clarity published by the University of Illinois Press.

Hailed by New York Times critic Mark Swed as ‘probably [America's] most subversive composer …able to make both radical thinking and avant-garde techniques sound invariably gracious’, Johnston’s diligent dedication recently resulted in the release of the third CD by the Milwaukee-based Kepler Quartet  on the New World Music label.  The three CD series encompasses all of Johnston’s string quartets and took 14 years of pains-taking collaboration to bring to fruition, receiving high acclaim internationally.  Johnston has been well-known in experimental music circles since his 2nd quartet came out on Nonesuch Records in 1969.

“Hailed by Gramophone as “masters of all musical things they survey” and two-time winner of the top Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, the Del Sol String Quartet shares living music with an ever-growing community of adventurous listeners.

Del Sol was founded in 1992 at Banff Centre for the Arts and is recognized as a “vigorous champion of living composers,” focusing on music that reflects the cultural diversity of our community, advocating works by both world-renowned and emerging composers, and collaborating across disciplines. Del Sol has commissioned and premiered over 100 works by a diverse range of composers.

The Quartet has performed on prominent concert series nationwide, including the Kennedy Center, Library of Congress, National Gallery of Art, Symphony Space, Cabrillo Festival, Other Minds Festival, and Santa Fe Opera; [plus numerous venues overseas].  The Quartet conducts an active educational program in the San Francisco Bay Area, in addition to regular residencies at universities and music schools across the country.”  Source: http://delsolquartet.com/