Jasper String Quartet Releases 'Insects And Machines'

Sono Luminus releases Insects and Machines, the Jasper String Quartet's new album featuring JUNO Award-winning composer Vivian Fung's String Quartets Nos. 1-4. This is the premiere commercial recording of Fung's first four string quartets, composed over a span of 18 years from 2001 to 2019.

Truly a collaborative effort, the portrait album was recorded by the Jasper String Quartet (violinists J Freivogel and Karen Kim, violist Andrew Gonzalez, and cellist Rachel Henderson Freivogel) with the composer in the studio, in October 2022. The album title is borrowed from the subtitle of Fung's fourth quartet.

NPR calls Vivian Fung “one of today's most eclectic composers” and The Philadelphia Inquirer praises her “stunningly original compositional voice.” A recipient of Chamber Music America's prestigious Cleveland Quartet Award, the Jasper String Quartet has been hailed as “sonically delightful and expressively compelling,” (The Strad) and described by Gramophone as “flawless in ensemble and intonation, expressively assured and beautifully balanced.” The Quartet's 2017 album Unbound was named by The New York Times as one of the 25 Best Classical Recordings of the year.

Vivian Fung has long been a friend and admired composer of the Jasper String Quartet. The Quartet first performed one of her works in 2019, and was immediately captivated by the visceral energy and impeccable craft of her writing.

The Jasper Quartet says, “Vivian's String Quartets Nos. 1–4 reflect a remarkable journey of absorbing, integrating, and synthesizing a unique spectrum of influences into her compositional voice. Unwavering in all of the works is a fierce heart, instrumental fearlessness, and an amazing instinct for texture. We are incredibly grateful to have recorded these works with Vivian in the studio and for the growth we experienced in the process.”

In spring 2024 at the Kaufman Music Center, the Jasper String Quartet will collaborate with tenor Nicholas Phan and pianist Myra Huang on the premiere of a new work by Vivian Fung addressing climate change, culminating in the world premiere performance on May 30, 2024. The new work centers around poet Claire Wahmanholm's prize-winning poem “O,” which took second place at the Academy of American Poets' inaugural Treehouse Climate Action Poem Prize.

About the Music on the Album

The piece that became the third movement of Vivian Fung's String Quartet No. 1, “Pizzicato,” was composed while Fung was in residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in 2001, for a reading by the American String Quartet. Fung had been listening to and absorbing influences from the folk music of parts of Asia, including China and Indonesia, and incorporated them into this piece. She went on to compose the other three virtuosic movements of the piece over the next two years, with the Avalon String Quartet premiering the entire work in 2004.

Of her String Quartet No. 2, Fung states, “As a composer, I try to best represent in musical terms my own individual voice in each work that I write. Even though each composition addresses different artistic challenges, issues of my Asian identity underscore much of my work. Oftentimes, the source of inspiration for a work lies in Asian folk materials, as is the case in this String Quartet No. 2, which uses a Chinese folksong as the basis of the introduction, interlude, and postlude.” The piece, which comprises six shorter movements, each a study in a certain mood or affect, was premiered by the Shanghai Quartet at The Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. in 2009.

Vivian Fung wrote her String Quartet No. 3 in 2013 for the Banff International String Quartet Competition. The piece revolves around a chant. Fung writes, “Evoking non-Western song, the chant is announced by the entire quartet, highly ornamented, powerful, and tuned to suggest the microtonal tendencies found in many non-Western scales. My recent reflections on faith and spirituality come to life in this quartet as a world of varied prayers, sometimes turbulent, sometimes passionate, sung to oneself or among a crowd.”

Fung's String Quartet No. 4: Insects and Machines from 2019 was influenced by her time in Cambodia. She writes, “I was especially attuned to the persistent noises of buzzing insects that accompanied my walk through the thick jungle, and this cacophony gelled with my emotional reaction to the terrible genocide of the Khmer people. I give voice to this background babbling in this quartet, organizing the various moments as episodes that freely morph from one event into another. One can hear buzzing at the beginning that turns into a waltz, which in turn transforms into a motoric adventure of machine-like chuggings-along.”

Watch the Jasper String Quartet in Vivian Fung's String Quartet No. 1 here:

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