New Adventures in Sound Art And PSQ Projects Present PSQ + DJ P-Love

The Gladstone Hotel is known internationally as one of the top art hotels in the world hosting a buzzing cultural scene. It's a perfect place for the Penderecki String Quartet to flex its funkier muscles. The upcoming PSQ + DJ P-Love lounge event at the Gladstone finds a path from artsy lap-top sound manipulation to dance electronica. The repertoire features Kotoka Suzuki's colourful Vestigia for string quartet and live electronics (2011); Steve Reich's pulsating classic Different Trains for string quartet and tape (1988); Nicole Lizée's This Will Not Be Televised for 7 players and turntablist (2005-2007); and New York City's DJ P-Love takes it into the wee hours with solo sets. The musicians are joined by Rick Sacks, percussion; Greg Samek, drumkit; Brian Baty, double bass; and Greg Oh, conductor. The audio will be supported via a surrounding 8-speaker high-end system with spatialization by Darren Copeland and Hector Centeno from New Adventures in Sound Art. 

Based in Waterloo, the Penderecki String Quartet's multi-faceted approach has seen them in recent years playing classical repertoire in venues like Carnegie Hall and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, as well as performing Zappa's music at The Rivoli and jamming with DJ Spooky at the Starlight Lounge. This time they team-up with DJ P-Love who is known widely by his work with Kid Koala.

As Penderecki violinist Jeremy Bell explains, "An event like this makes us feel alive to our culture by exploring ways to combine current technology with the luminous tradition of the string quartet. This show is also about just having a blast with the genre crossovers that exist in this music. And please enjoy a Martini while contemplating the need to dance it out a bit with P-Love".

The works to be presented here all use electronics in distinct ways. Kotoka Suzuki's Vestigia for string quartet and live electronics was developed with the aid of top quantum physicists at Waterloo's Perimeter Institute and uses a quantum computer to generate some of the sounds. Steve Reich's Grammy Award-winning Different Trains for string quartet and tape compares and contrasts various train scenes from the composer's life by using pre-recorded sounds and speech as a rhythmic ‘track' for the quartet. This Will Not Be Televised is Nicole Lizée's psychedelic turntable fantasia for DJ and seven musicians, combining pitch-based manipulation techniques, and snippets from "The Sounds of Music", David Lee-Roth, and Duran Duran to name a few. And what will DJ P-Love do? The audience will find out.

The Penderecki String Quartet gratefully acknowledges the Ontario Arts Council for its support through the Presenter/Producer Project Grant Fund; Canada Council for the Arts; New Adventures in Sound Arts; and the Gladstone Hotel.

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