Jupiter Quartet Perform the World Premiere of Singing Land with the University of Illinois Chamber Singers – Music by Su Lian Tan & Text by Robin Wall Kimmerer
L-R Robin Wall Kimmerer, Photo by Dale Kakkak; Jupiter Quartet, Photo by Todd Rosenberg; Su Lian Tan, Photo courtesy of artist
The Jupiter String Quartet
and the University of Illinois Chamber Singers
Perform the World Premiere of Singing Land
Music by Su Lian Tan & Text by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Commissioned by the Jupiter String Quartet
Presented by Krannert Center for the Performing Arts
Sunday, October 20, 2024 at 3:00pm
University of Illinois | Krannert Center | Foellinger Great Hall
500 S Goodwin Ave. | Urbana, IL
Tickets and Information
“an ensemble of eloquent intensity, has matured into one of the mainstays of the American chamber-music scene.” – The New Yorker
Urbana, IL – The Jupiter String Quartet –– internationally acclaimed winners of the Banff International String Quartet Competition and the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition who are known for their “compelling” performances (BBC Music Magazine) –– will open their season at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts with the world premiere of Singing Land, performed with the University of Illinois Chamber Singers, on Sunday, October 20, 2024 at 3:00pm in Foellinger Great Hall (500 S. Goodwin Ave). Singing Land, a collaboration with Potawatomi botanist/writer Robin Wall Kimmerer and composer Su Lian Tan, is the latest in a series of Jupiter Quartet-commissioned works celebrating the environment. The program will also feature Michi Wiancko’s To Unpathed Waters, Undreamed Shores –– a work written in 2020 specifically for the Jupiter Quartet, which was commissioned by Bay Chamber Concerts in partnership with the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts/University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign –– as well as a series of works for chamber choir alone and in collaboration with the quartet. Ms. Kimmerer, author of the profound and popular Braiding Sweetgrass, as well as other works, will also be featured throughout the program. Interactive events will follow in the Krannert Center Stage 5 lobby.
Su Lian Tan and Robin Wall Kimmerer describe Singing Land as, “a new garden of sound, recalling ancient and modern voices and the mysticism of string instruments, voices of bullfrogs, and hawks who cry warnings. The circle of life continues and we create a world that is both spiritual and material. Text becomes music, music weaves the lushness of greenery and the breath exchanging on our planet, perhaps with the required urgency. Are we now in the aubade or the twilight? We can love the earth back to wholeness.”
Of this unique collaborative program, Jupiter Quartet says:
”We are honored to share the stage with two powerfully artistic women, author Robin Wall Kimmerer and composer Su Lian Tan. It will be a joy to explore their work together, and to collaborate with students, faculty, and community members at our home base of the University of Illinois.”
[Based in Urbana, IL and giving concerts all over the country, the Jupiter String Quartet is a particularly intimate group, consisting of violinists Nelson Lee and Meg Freivogel, violist Liz Freivogel (Meg’s older sister), and cellist Daniel McDonough (Meg’s husband, Liz’s brother-in-law). Brought together by ties both familial and musical, the Jupiter Quartet has been performing together since 2001. Exuding an energy that is at once friendly, knowledgeable, and adventurous, the Quartet celebrates every opportunity to bring their close-knit and lively style to audiences. Their connections to each other and the length of time they’ve shared the stage always shine through in their intuitive performances. The Quartet has performed in some of the world’s finest halls, including New York City’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, Boston’s Jordan Hall, Mexico City's Palacio de Bellas Artes, Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center and Library of Congress, Austria’s Esterhazy Palace, Seoul’s Sejong Chamber Hall, and more.
In addition to performances worldwide, the Jupiter has been in residence at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign since 2012, where they maintain private studios and direct the chamber music program. This season, they perform four concerts at the Krannert Center including this season opener on October 20; a concert on November 12, 2024; a program of sextets with two of their Ying Quartet colleagues, violist Phillip Ying and cellist David Ying on February 4, 2025; and a concert of octets including the Mendelssohn Octet with the Aris Quartet on March 13, 2025.
A dedicated flutist, composer, and teacher, Su Lian Tan is a professor of music at Middlebury College who has received accolades and awards from ASCAP, the Academy of Arts and Letters of Québec, the Toulmin and Naumburg Foundations, and the Yaddo and MacDowell arts colonies. Her “wonderfully dramatic music” (Gramophone) is inspired by tonalities, timbres, and themes of her Malaysian Chinese heritage. Previous commissioning collaborators include the Grammy-winning Takács String Quartet, Da Capo Chamber Players, Vermont Symphony, and author Jamaica Kincaid. The Jupiter Quartet introduced Krannert Center audiences to the music of Su Lian Tan last season (November 2023) in their program “Folk Encounters.”
A mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Robin Wall Kimmerer is the author of the award-winning books Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants and Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. The 2022 MacArthur Fellow lives in Syracuse, New York, where she is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of environmental biology and the founder/director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: The Jupiter Quartet, the Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, which The New Yorker describes as “an ensemble of eloquent intensity,” gives the world premiere of Singing Land, a collaboration with Potawatomi botanist/writer Robin Wall Kimmerer and Malaysian-Chinese composer Su Lian Tan, with the University of Illinois Chamber Singers. Singing Land is the latest in a series of Jupiter Quartet-commissioned works celebrating the environment.
Concert details:
Who: Jupiter String Quartet with the University of Illinois Chamber Singers
What: Singing Land – music by Su Lian Tan and text by Robin Wall Kimmerer
When: Sunday, October 20, 2024 at 3:00pm
Where: University of Illinois; Krannert Center for the Performing Arts; Foellinger Great Hall; 500 S Goodwin Ave.; Urbana, IL
Tickets and information: www.krannertcenter.com/events/jupiter-string-quartet-ui-chamber-singers-and-special-guests-robin-wall-kimmerer-and-su-lian