By sitting still, artist Beth Surdut is better able to observe our desert fauna. The Botanical Gardens hosts her work.
Acclaimed French quartet
at the TCC next week
The classical music world has been going gaga over the dynamic young Modigliani Quartet.
They’ve been around a dozen years and counting, building a reputation for performances that are equal parts playful and panache.
The Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald, reviewing a concert last October, said the quartet plays “with elegance and shaded refinement, bringing a distinctive style to the tapering of phrase, balance and the quality of sound.” The Herald of Scotland said the group’s playing “was focused, ballsy and eloquent.”
One German critic went so far as to declare the Modigliani to be “one of today’s best quartets in the world,” praising its “balance, transparency, symphonic comprehension, and confident style,” according to a post on Arizona Friends of Chamber Music’s website.
The members — violinists Philippe Bernhard and Loïc Rio, violist Laurent Marfaing and cellist François Kieffer — met in college in 2003. The next year, they collected their first major competition prize, top finish in the Frits Philips String Quartet competition in Eindhoven. In 2005, they followed that with first prize at the Vittorio Rimbotti competition in Florence, Italy, then the Young Concert Artists Auditions in New York in 2006.
Next came the invites to prestigious halls around the world including Carnegie in New York and the storied Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.
On Wednesday, Feb. 17, they make their debut at Tucson’s Leo Rich Theatre as guests of the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music. They will play a program that includes Beethoven’s Quartet in B-flat Major, Schubert’s Quartet Movement in C minor and Dvorák’s Quartet No. 12 in F major, “American.” The concert starts at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets are $30, $10 for students at arizonachambermusic.org or at the door, 260 S. Church Ave.
SASO off to Brazil
The Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra has been to China twice and Oaxaca, Mexico, three times.
This week it heads to Brazil.
Forty members of the well-traveled volunteer orchestra will team up with members of the Symphony Orchestra of Rio Grande do Norte and other Brazilian musicians for a pair of concerts at the Gramado in Concert International Music Festival beginning Friday, Feb. 12. The orchestra will leave Tucson on Thursday, Feb. 11.
SASO’s concerts are on Sunday, Feb. 14, and Tuesday, Feb. 16, in Gramado, a European-style tourist town in mountains of Rio Grande do Sul in southern Brazil. Their programs include Morton Gould’s “American Salute” and Dvorák’s Symphony No. 9 “From the New World.”
Linus Lerner, a native of Brazil, is artistic director of both orchestras and founder of the festival, which was launched in early 2015.
Watching and drawing
Beth Surdut makes art by paying attention.
Sitting still and observing has given her a chance to create art of some of the wild critters that grace our parts.
“The Art of Paying Attention: Beth Surdut’s Illustrated Nature Stories” is at the Tucson Botanical Gardens through Feb. 28, with an artist’s reception from 5-7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 11.
The TBG is at 2150 N. Alvernon Way. More information at 326-9686 or tucsonbotanical.org.
‘4000 Miles’ is a trip
This weekend, Something Something Theatre opens Amy Herzog’s “4000 Miles” at the Cabaret Theatre at the Temple of Music and Art, 330 S. Scott Ave.
The play, a finalist for the 2013 Pulitizer Prize in drama, is about a young man who has a major loss and turns to his grandmother for solace and support.
And what a grandmother: She smokes dope, reveals personal details of her marriages, insults her grandson’s friend. But in the end, she allows him to grieve for his loss. It’s a drama but wrapped in lots of laughs.
Performances are 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays, Feb. 12-28. Tickets are $22 at somethingsomethingtheatre.com or 468-6111.
