Spektral Quartet Unveils Online Card Deck Emulator for New Double Album EXPERIMENTS IN LIVING

Spektral Quartet has announced the second phase of the group's inventive new digital-only record, Experiments in Living (New Focus Recordings): an elegantly designed online version of the album's interactive card deck, free to all users at https://eil.spektralquartet.com.

While this Tarot-like experience encourages the listener to encounter individual tracks out of order, the real ambition of the cards lies with the mini, descriptive "bridge" cards that users lay between tracks. With 64 words to choose from, including skittering, ecstatic, prismatic, and sillypants, listeners become curators of their own shuffled playlists - selecting the word that for them best links individual movements separated by era, geography, or style. Rather than being told why these divergent pieces belong on an album together by the quartet, the player enjoys the freedom to decide for themselves, promoting a deep listening approach.

This double album, featuring two hours of music, celebrates the quartet's 10th anniversary season in 2020-2021 and is the first all-Spektral album since their GRAMMY-nominated Serious Business (Sono Luminus, 2016). The concept of the programming represents a core tenet of the quartet's philosophy as an ensemble - that divergent styles of music spanning centuries speak to one another in unexpected and captivating ways, and that the unfamiliar can rapidly become familiar in the right context. Part One pursues three historic innovators and singular voices circumventing the entrenched rules of their time - Johannes Brahms, Arnold Schoenberg, and Ruth Crawford (Seeger) - while Part Two pitches through passageways of music motivated by improvisation, experimentation, and jazz by way of composers Anthony Cheung, Sam Pluta, Charmaine Lee, and George Lewis.

Having developed Tarot-style cards designed by Copenhagen-based collage artist and musician øjeRum (http://instagram.com/oejerum), the quartet has created an innovative, self-guided, "choose your own adventure" approach to experiencing the album.
The quartet collectively states, "Like the concept proffered by John Stuart Mill from which the album takes its title, the 'freedom' found within these 'experiments in living' is a result of making choices without blind acceptance for the way things are or have been." More information about the album is available here: www.spektralquartet.com/experiments-in-living.

ALBUM/DECK DETAILS

Experiments in Living can be enjoyed by one or more players

Purchase of the card deck includes an audiophile-quality download of the double album

While the cards are available in physical and digital formats, the album is digital-only

Experiments in Living was developed in consultation with University of Chicago professor and Game Changer Chicago Design Lab co-founder Patrick Jagoda

Experiments in Living was designed by Natalie Bontumasi (Good Thomas Design

The Experiments in Living online emulator was developed by Critique Gaming

Spektral Quartet: Experiments in Living | New Focus Recordings | Released August 28, 2020

Tracklisting

[1-4] Johannes Brahms (1833-1897): String Quartet in C minor, Op. 51 No. 1 (1873)

[5-8] Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951): String Quartet No. 3, Op. 30 (1927)

[9-12] Ruth Crawford (Seeger) (1901-1953): String Quartet (1931)

[13] Sam Pluta (b.1979): binary/momentary logics: flow state/joy state (2016)

[14-18] Anthony Cheung (b.1982): The Real Book of Fake Tunes for flute and string quartet (2015)

Featuring Claire Chase, flutes

[19] Charmaine Lee (b.1991): Spinals (2018)

Featuring Charmaine Lee, voice and electronics

Devised in collaboration with Spektral Quartet

[20] George Lewis (b.1952): String Quartet 1.5: Experiments in Living (2016)

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