"I’ve just returned to snowy New York City from a fantastic two-week residency at the Anchorage Museum with Mivos Quartet. Anchorage was clear, white, and cold—a welcome change, I’m told, from the previous two winters—forming a perfect backdrop for investigations into contemporary string music about the north and by northern voices.
We presented daily pop-up concerts at noon in various spots around the museum, concerts in the planetarium with commissioned visuals for Hans Abrahamsen’s String Quartet 4 and Robert Honstein’s Arctic, and a final concert within the new Polar Bear Garden exhibition about the cultural and geographic zone between Russia and Alaska. On this concert, Mivos performed Sofia Gubaidulina’s fervent String Quartet 4, using a backing track (and superball mallets) that Mivos recorded and I edited and mixed with dedicated engineering by the Museum’s Jay Hall. The show also featured movements by Canadian composer Taylor Brook, American composers Scott Wollschleger and Robert Honstein, and Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen.
In addition to these museum activities, Mivos performed at 6:45am on Channel 11 KTVA Alaska, and visited the music department of UAA, playing excerpts and discussing repertoire, collaborations with living composers, and making a life in contemporary music.
We even managed to squeeze in a couple of visits to the surrounding mountains and glaciers of southcentral Alaska, to face-plant in the deep snow, to freeze our toes at the start of the Iditarod, and to savor the strange and persistent dusky colors of the subarctic winter." - Conrad Winslow, Wild Shore Artistic Director
We presented daily pop-up concerts at noon in various spots around the museum, concerts in the planetarium with commissioned visuals for Hans Abrahamsen’s String Quartet 4 and Robert Honstein’s Arctic, and a final concert within the new Polar Bear Garden exhibition about the cultural and geographic zone between Russia and Alaska. On this concert, Mivos performed Sofia Gubaidulina’s fervent String Quartet 4, using a backing track (and superball mallets) that Mivos recorded and I edited and mixed with dedicated engineering by the Museum’s Jay Hall. The show also featured movements by Canadian composer Taylor Brook, American composers Scott Wollschleger and Robert Honstein, and Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen.
In addition to these museum activities, Mivos performed at 6:45am on Channel 11 KTVA Alaska, and visited the music department of UAA, playing excerpts and discussing repertoire, collaborations with living composers, and making a life in contemporary music.
We even managed to squeeze in a couple of visits to the surrounding mountains and glaciers of southcentral Alaska, to face-plant in the deep snow, to freeze our toes at the start of the Iditarod, and to savor the strange and persistent dusky colors of the subarctic winter." - Conrad Winslow, Wild Shore Artistic Director