READER: BOZZINI
22.07.2025
Linda Catlin Smith: Reverie (2024) – 28′
Cassandra Miller: Warblework (2011/17) – 16′
PAUSE
Ann Cleare: Meridians II (2024/25) – 31′
for two saxophones and string quartet
World Premiere
Cassandra Miller: Three Songs (2025) – 24′
I. Ange
II. Claire
III. Bella
World Premiere
Patrick Stadler (Saxophone)
Marcus Weiss (Saxophone)
Quatuor Bozzini
Clemens Merkel (Violin)
Alissa Cheung (Violin)
Stéphanie Bozzini (Viola)
Isabelle Bozzini (Violoncello)
Supported by:
Conseil des arts du Canada
CALQ (Conceil des arts et des letters du Québec)
REVERIE
To be in a reverie is to be lost in thought; to compose music (and to listen to music) is an invitation to be lost in musical thought. In a reverie, the mind pulls one this way and that, there are strands of thought that take one here and there. In this work, the four musicians mostly play as one, while oftentimes one or another of them will pull away, a stray thread pulling away from the fabric. These stray filaments circle around an idea, approaching it from this angle, then that, in a constantly shifting point of view, like being lost in a reverie. I am so grateful to the Bozzini Quartet, my old friends, for commissioning this work, and for their dedication to composers over so many years.
Linda Catlin Smith
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Bozzini Quartet on Linda Catlin Smith
Isabelle Bozzini: Linda wasn’t one of the most accepted composers for a long time. Her pieces were almost not played by the orchestras and bigger ensembles. We loved her music from the beginning. In the meantime, she has won over a lot of young composers and performers.
Clemens Merkel: We played some of her quartets quite often, but this one is the first one that we commissioned ourselves. Linda is part of a very interesting branch of cultural genealogy in Canada. There is Rudolf Komorous, a really obscure Czech composer who left Czech Republic in 1968 and moved to Victoria on Vancouver island. Generations of composers went through his teaching there. Many people went through his school: Linda Catlin Smith, Martin Arnold, Christopher Butterfield, Owen Underhill, Rodney Sharman …
WARBLEWORK
This piece has an unusual origin. Years ago, in order to leave my home on the west coast of Canada to study composition in Europe, I raised money for my travel by selling as-yet unwritten bars of music to everyone I’d ever met. The result was a huge commission from over sixty friends, family, and community members. In 2011, with the help of the Quatuor Bozzini, I finally made good on my promise and created the piece Warblework.
Each of Warblework‘s four movements (warble = chirp) is based on birdsong – in particular of four thrushes (Swainson’s thrush, hermit thrush, wood thrush, veery thrush) – whose songs follow the harmonic series. When this birdsong is slowed down, they reveal incredibly human-like melodies. These four movements therefore put forth a sort of poem of the regional sounds from the Pacific Coast and its forests. While the thrushes move through the harmonic series, a tune in slow motion reveals melodies accented in folk and old jazz standard traditions.
Cassandra Miller
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Isabelle Bozzini: … and Cassandra Miller is a student of Christopher Butterfield again. She is part of the third generation. A lot of the younger generation have studied with Butterfield.
MERIDIANS II
Inspired by a recent project that explored instruments for mapping the night sky, Meridians II, for two saxophones and string quartet, imagines the ensemble as an instrument for measuring luminosity and time.
The saxophone figures unfurl like longitudes, vertical lines of energy in transformation. The string quartet forms a forcefield within which the saxophone longitudes circumnavigate and fluctuate.
Cycles of light and energy converge and diverge, akin to a sundial and nocturnal at work in the modulating worlds of day and night.
Commissioned by Patrick Stadler, Marcus Weiss, and the Bozzini Quartet with funds from the Arts Council of Ireland.
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Isabelle Bozzini: Ann Cleare is an interesting composer and on our radar for a long time.
Clemens Merkel: Patrick Stadler brought this project in. I don‘t know where the idea came up to have two saxophones and string quartet, but we’re happy to play!
Isabelle Bozzini: We had some other projects with Irish composers already – Seán Clancy for example, who took part in our composer’s kitchen, and we have worked a lot with Jennifer Walshe as well.
THREE SONGS
Three Songs (2025) is about the joy of learning new things about old friends. This piece is a continuation of a long friendship with the Quatuor Bozzini which began in 2009. When we started working on this piece, I asked the quartet many questions, including what songs they sang as children, or perhaps to their children. To these and other questions, I was delighted to understand that there was so much about my old friends that I didn’t yet know – and I was reminded of the poem The Whistler by Mary Oliver where she writes about learning with surprise that her wife of thirty years can whistle (“as from the throat of a cheerful bird, not caught but visiting”).
These three French and Italian folk / campfire songs were sang to me by the quartet members, and I have treated them almost as lullabies — thinking about how it feels to sing to a child or friend, about how it is not only comforting for the receiver but also for the singer. I started by transcribing their singing, and I zoomed in on the elements that had to do with the feeling of rocking, holding or consolling. These elements then repeat around and around until they can be heard out of context, as if anew. “I know her so well, I think. I thought. […] Who is this I’ve been living with for thirty years? This clear, dark, lovely whistler?”
Co-commissioned by: The Earle Brown Music Foundation Charitable Trust, Le Vivier, Soundstreams, Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Quatuor Bozzini
with support from: Canada Council for the Arts, hcmf//
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Clemens Merkel: Cassandra Miller was a participant in our format Composer’s Kitchen in 2009, and has become a mentor later.
Isabelle Bozzini: Many of our former kitchen participants have become regular collaborators of the ensemble.
