Philomusica Quartet’s ‘Transcendence and Mystery’

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The Philomusica Quartet kicks off their 2022-2023 season with a concert in the delightful Schwan Hall on the Wisconsin Lutheran College campus with a program entitled “Transcendence and Mystery.”

Philomusica is the resident quartet at the college. Violinists Jeanyi Kim and Alexander Mandl, violist Nathan Hackett and cellist Adrien Zitoun formed Philomusica in 2008 as an outlet for sharing and expressing their love of chamber music. Kim, Hackett and Zitoun are members of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Mandl is concertmaster for several regional symphony orchestras besides teaching music at UW-Parkside, Wisconsin Lutheran College and the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. Hackett and Zitoun also teach at Wisconsin Lutheran College.

The members of the quartet are from around the world. Kim is from Toronto; her husband, Mandl, was a violinist and conductor in his native Brazil. Hackett is a native of Wisconsin while Zitoun is from France.

I asked Zitoun about the title for this program and he explained how mystery is the underlying leitmotif. The concert includes Haydn’s String Quartet in D minor (Op. 76); Schubert’s String Quartet No. 15 in G Major, D 887 which “reveals a cosmic grandeur like no other at the time”; and An Elegy: A Cry from the Grave by Carlos Simon, currently composer-in-residence for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Simon’s work has also been performed by the National Symphony Orchestra and Washington National Opera. A recording of his Requiem for the Enslaved, a multi-genre musical tribute commemorating the stories of the 272 enslaved men, women, and children sold in 1838 by Georgetown University, was just released by Decca on June 20. 

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Simon dedicated An Elegy “to those who have been murdered wrongfully by an oppressive power; namely Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner and Michael Brown.” His music is soulful and powerful. Why he is not well-known is a mystery.

The concert begins at 7:30 p.m., Oct. 10 at Wisconsin Lutheran College’s Schwan Hall (8815 W Wisconsin Ave.) Information about tickets, parking and directions can be found on the Wisconsin Lutheran College website: wlc.edu.