Catalyst Quartet & the Native America Composer Apprentice Project – Part 2

The Catalyst Quartet returns for a second program from the 2023 Grand Canyon Music Festival on “Arizona Encore.”

Only three members of the quartet—no cello—are required for Antonín Dvořák’s Miniatures (“Drobnosti”). They were known for decades only in the arrangement he quickly made for violin and piano, titled “Four Romantic Pieces.” But this original version has its own charm, written as it was for what amounted to a housemate’s party.

This is also the second installment of the Native American Composer Apprentice Project (NACAP), where Native composers and professional ensembles join to mentor Native high school students to write their own music. It’s been active since 2001 and Arizona PBS has a new documentary about it.

The Catalyst Quartet is a dedicated participating ensemble in NACAP and visits schools in the Navajo Nation and elsewhere to teach students about the possibilities of composing for instruments. Some of the resulting compositions are featured in this program along with comments by the students.

Argentine musician Astor Piazzolla has had a renaissance since violinist Gidon Kremer championed his music in the 1990s shortly after the composer’s death. Often played in various combinations of instruments, his music takes tango as a heavy influence but also uses traditional classical techniques from formal training with Nadia Boulanger and others. The Catalyst Quartet plays incidental music by Piazzolla from “Tango del Angel,” a play of Alberto Rodriguez Muñoz in which an angel visits a poor Buenos Aires neighborhood. The four movements together make up his Angel Suite.