Inspiration for the Quartet Project

While composing has long been my principal musical focus, I still relish my occasional

opportunities to play quartets with friends. Playing string quartets was the touchstone of

my musical education, and I can never forget the excitement with which I explored the

classical repertoire.

How exciting would it be if that first discovery of chamber music also included music of

today? As a young cellist, I hungered for those sounds, but it was years before my

musical growth allowed me to try Bartok, Shostakovich, and other great composers of the

early 20th century. Other masters—Carter, Ligeti, Shapey—remained permanently out of

my reach.

With the Quartet Project, I hope to offer beginning string quartets a chance to taste the

harmonies, textures, and rhythms of today’s music. I want to bring newer sounds into the

tradition, offering an alternative to the “classical” virtues of balance and restraint prized by

Haydn and Mozart. The music of the Quartet Project will embrace the omnipresent

rhythmic grooves of popular music and the folk-based musics of Ireland, India, Latin

America, and the Balkans, bringing the sonic diversity of today’s musical world into the

reach of string players from the outset of their studies.— Geoffrey Hudson