Spektral Quartet

Founded in 2010, the Spektral Quartet is widely regarded as one of Chicago’s most magnetic and forward-thinking chamber ensembles. The group’s inclusive approach to concert format, transforming the audience experience from a transactional one to a far more intimate phenomenon, has earned it a loyal following within and far beyond the city limits.

Since its inception, the Spektral Quartet has sought out the discourse between the masterworks of the traditional canon and those written this decade, this year, or this week. Rather than simply pairing Brian Ferneyhough with Josef Haydn or Thomas Adès with Béla Bartók, though, the group offers listeners an even more elastic and absorbing experience through its Sampler Pack concert format. For these performances, shorter works and single movements are curated in a setlist containing a menagerie of musical styles, spanning centuries. The unexpected similarities and enticing contrasts between two or three composers becomes a conversation between twelve.

The 2013/14 season finds the group venturing into another bold endeavor at the intersection of music and everyday life with Mobile Miniatures. For it, forty composers from across the US including David Lang, Augusta Read Thomas, Nico Muhly and Shulamit Ran were commissioned to write ringtone-length pieces for the Spektral Quartet to workshop, record and make available to the public for download to mobile devices.

Now in its fourth season, the Spektral Quartet serves as ensemble-in-residence at the University of Chicago and was invited in 2013 to join the Rush Hour Series’s Back-of-the-Yards project, which will offer year-long music education and outreach in one of Chicago’s most under-served neighborhoods.

The 2013/14 season will see the launch of the Spektral Quartet’s second album, a Latin jazz collaboration with bandoneon/accordion virtuoso Julien Labro, slated for release in the Spring of 2014 on Azica Records. In November of 2013, the Spektral Quartet travels to Switzerland and France to perform and record Ernest Chausson’s Concerto for violin, piano and string quartet, Op. 21 with violinist Rachel Kolly d’Alba and pianist Christian Chamorel for the Warner Classics label.