JAVS Summer 2021

Example 3. Page 2 from Leah Asher’s Letters to My Future Self. The upper half of the page is the violin part, the lower half the viola part. Click the icon to the right for an audio recording (performed live at Kent State University on Nov. 21, 2019, Vanguard New Music Guest Artist Series).

andPlay’s “more than” philosophy guides our commissioning efforts and has helped to develop our unique identity as an ensemble. Though we feel closely tied to each of our commissions, we do not commission pieces solely for our own use, and encourage other violinists and violists to explore and perform works from our repertoire! As andPlay continues working towards reimagining and strengthening the identity for the instrumentation, we hope that our “more than” approach inspires a more vibrant future for the violin/viola duo. Dr. Hannah Levinson is an active scholar-performer of contemporary and classical music based in New York City. In addition to andPlay, she is the violist of the Talea Ensemble, the Fair Trade Trio, and a member of the Albany Symphony Orchestra. Hannah recently completed her Ph.D. in Viola Performance at New York University; her research explores how contemporary artistic practices engage with their surrounding political environments. Learn more at www. hannahlevinsonmusic.com and www.andplayduo.com.

Conclusion

While a soloist is capable of individual virtuosity and a quartet is able to combine four voices to create a lush composite, the violin/viola duo acts as a chameleon, able to embody any number of identities. Behzadi used the similarities of the instruments to create a super-instrument of eight strings. Bird’s natural incorporation of extended techniques neutralized the hierarchy sometimes assumed between traditional and contemporary ways of playing, treating every sonic event as intentional and worthy of consideration. Finally, Asher created a score with space for ambiguity and choice on behalf of the performers. Her work captures andPlay’s musical identity as it embraces our musical dispositions, personalities, and interests as an ensemble. While I used each of these works to demonstrate one principle, I would argue that they each achieve all three, successfully embodying our musical mission.

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 37, 2021 Online Issue

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