Monday 25 March, 7.00 pm to 8.00 pm, Pavilion Rm
Hughes Hall Music is delighted to welcome back the Cambridge Quartet to present a programme entitled ‘Fairytale’. This celebrates the oral tradition in an intimate concert to include Schubert’s Rosamunde Quartet, as well as music by Stravinsky, Dvorak, Mendelssohn and Hensel.
‘Once upon a time’….Words that are comfortingly familiar, but also conjure up enchantment and wonder. Where will the story take us this time? Telling and re-telling fairytales connects us to the magical powers of the human imagination across time and space. Familiarity and repetition invites individuality: there is no correct way to tell – or listen to – a fairytale.
Inspired by this aural/oral tradition, we have created our own musical fairytale. A theme from Schubert’s ‘Death and the Maiden’ quartet weaves its way through music by Purcell, Dvorak, Stravinsky and both Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn. It is a musical journey that evokes familiar fairytale scenarios, characters and plot devices: but we ultimately leave the story up to you.
The Cambridge String Quartet welcomes you to our story and invites you to share yours, as you join us for this magical evening of tale-telling.
News
We are delighted to announce an exciting new collaboration, which will see the Quartet recognising the college as it’s official ‘home’. Read more about it here.
Support Hughes Hall Music
We aim to make the Hughes Hall music programme free whenever possible. However, if you are able, please consider making a contribution to help cover musicians’ expenses and to ensure the future of Hughes Hall Music.
Please reserve a place using the Eventbrite link, click here
About the musicians
Stephane Crayton (violin)
Stephane Crayton is a composer and violinist based in Cambridge, UK. His work reassesses various social dynamics of performance, staging dialogues between old traditions and new, invented traditions. He has composed for the CBSO, the Ligeti Quartet, and rites, a musical and theatrical collective he co-founded in 2016 alongside fellow CSQ violinist Rachel Stroud and Zephyr Brüggen, which questions and challenges rituals and conventions of the concert hall. Their most recent project, 3 Dreams, wove music for two violins with lectures and recitations of Dante.
Stephane is currently writing a PhD at King’s College, Cambridge, on the subject of disorder in music: its codification, expression, and relation to its social, physical, and notational histories. He is especially interested in the music and writings of Luciano Berio.
Stephane teaches at the Royal Academy of Music, junior department, as well as supervises for the university here in Cambridge.
In his spare time Stephane writes about William Hogarth, and can be found printing in the dark room.
Rachel Stroud (violin)
Rachel Stroud is a baroque violinist, and is currently undertaking a Ph.D. in Musicology at King’s College, Cambridge University. After graduating with a first-class degree from Cambridge in 2010, Rachel toured for a year with the European Union Baroque Orchestra before studying at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague with Walter Reiter and Kati Debretzeni.
She now works professionally as a freelance violinist alongside her academic studies, and has performed all over the world in countries ranging from Latvia to Argentina with orchestras such as Music For Awhile, OAE, Brecon Baroque, Ex Cathedra and Les Passions de l’Ame, amongst others. Her research interests include the roles of sociality, agency and objects in performance, and she is currently investigating the relationship between notation and performance in Beethoven’s late string quartets.
Rachel represents the voice of her generation of period performers on the Council of the Academy of Ancient Music, and plays on a baroque violin made by Jonathan Woolston which is on loan to her from Nigel Brown and the Stradivari Trust.
Sam Kennedy (viola)
Sam is a graduate of Cambridge University and the Royal Northern College of Music studying violin with Howard Davis, Arisa Fujita and the viola with Asdis Valdimarsdottir. After graduating joined the European Union Baroque Orchestra, followed by two years playing with the band Elbow both experiences have helped to form a varied and eclectic career. He has performed with orchestras such as the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, St. Paul’s Sinfonia, The Academy of Ancient Music, Florilegium and Charivari Agreable.
He has also performed with the Borromini Quartet as part of York and Brighton’s respective Early Music Festivals and with the Netherlands based Eliot Quartet at the Van Wassanaer competition festival.
Sam’s love of theatre has also taken him into working for cabaret act Graffiti Classics as well as in the orchestra pits of Ghost, Les Miserables and Cinderella.
He owes particular gratitude to Margaret Faultless for her classes in baroque music at the university of Cambridge and to Walter Reiter and Kati Debrezeni’s shared baroque violin class at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague.
Joshua Lynch (cello)
Recipient of the Freda Dinn and Ida Marbett Award, St James Chamber Music Prize and Prix de musique de chambre Festival Ravel, Joshua Lynch is a passionate devotee of chamber music and has already enjoyed a diverse and creative career. Joshua studied with Emma Ferrand and Gillian Thoday at the Royal Northern College of Music and then continued his studies with Ursula Smith at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He also enjoyed mentoring by Peter Cropper, Oliver Wille and Simon Rowland-Jones.
Joshua is the cellist of the Cambridge String Quartet and the Vectis Duo with his duo partner, pianist Sally Birkett. He has enjoyed several European tours as part of the ‘Le Dimore del Quartetto’ and ‘Lincoln Center Stage’ networks alongside performing at the Wigmore Hall, The Crucible (MitR) and St Martin-in-the-Field. Joshua has also enjoyed performing with the LSO and Britten Sinfonia.
Away from performing Joshua is a passionate teacher and holds the position of cello tutor at the Stephen Perse Foundation and is a chamber music tutor at the Junior Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He is also a regular tutor at ProCorda, Aboyne Cello Festival, NLMS Summer School and Cambridge Chamber Academy.
photo credit: Stephane Crayton
