Music Around The Corner will present two concerts of chamber music on December 28 and 29 to brighten the between-the-holidays weekend. String quartets by Debussy, Canadian organist/composer Rachel Laurin and emerging composer Nicky Sohn are on the program.
A quartet of musicians will perform in intimate settings that include a fundraiser for the Glad Day Bookstore, and Blood Brothers Brewing, a craft microbrewery.
The Program
- Nicky Sohn: Three Questions That Began with a Small Flame
- Rachel Laurin: Deux Noëls for String Quartet
- Claude Debussy: String Quartet in G minor
Houston, TX based composer Nicky Sohn is known for a style that blends elements of jazz into the classical music mix. Her influences include Esa-Pekka Salonen, Chet Baker, and a number of living composers in between.
Her work, which consists of solo, chamber and orchestral pieces, has been performed to rave reviews in Asia, Europe and across the US. Her commissions include works composed for the Stuttgart Ballet, National Orchestra of Korea, St. Louis Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, and New York Choreographic Institute, among others. With a Master of Music Diploma from the Juilliard School, Nicky is working towards her doctoral degree at The Shepherd School of Music at Rice University.
Rachel Laurin (1961 – 2023) was known as an organist, composer, and music educator. A native of Saint-Benoît, Québec (now part of Mirabel), she studied the organ at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal, and would go on to a career an as international performer, along with her duties as the principal organist at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Ottawa.
She began studying composition as a teenager, and became house composer at Wayne Leupold Editions from 2006, although she eventually composed works by commission only. Her work won multiple awards, including the Holtkamp-AGO Composition Award in 2008, and the Distinguished Composer Award from the American Guild of Organists in 2020.
Her legacy includes works of chamber and orchestral music, along with many pieces for solo organ.
Op. 10 (L.91) is Debussy’s only string quartet, composed in 1893 at the age of 31. He’d planned on writing two string quartets, and dedicating at least the first to fellow composer Ernest Chausson, but both plans were scuttled, and we’re left with only one.
It premiered on December 29, 1893 as performed by the Ysaÿe Quartet, (he dedicated the piece to them), and the Parisian audience was said to have mixed reactions. It was ultra modern in style for the era. Typical of his style, it’s impressionistic and sensual in its approach, using recurring themes throughout. It’s a work that begins one of the more productive phases of his life as a composer. He’d go on to develop his signature soundscape later that decade in works like the Bergamesque Suite.
Maurice Ravel would write his own string quartet inspired by Debussy’s. It was a splash of modernism in a field that had been dominated by more traditional voices.
The Performers
Music Around the Corner is a concert series founded by violinist Emma Meinrenken and violist Lynn Sue-A-Quan in 2023, featuring Toronto-born and based classical musicians. Along with showcasing both traditional and contemporary classical repertoire, including Canadian composers and arrangers, their mandate includes turning a spotlight on Toronto businesses and venues.
Emma Meinrenken, Violinist, Co-Director
Emma Meinrenken is currently pursuing her Master of Musical Arts at Yale University with Augustin Hadelich. She earned a BMus from the Curtis Institute, and won Yale’s Presser Foundation Graduate Music Award. Her international competition wins include 1st place at the Stradivarius International Violin Competition and the Prix Ravel at the Ecole d’Art Américaines de Fontainebleau.
Emma has performed in Canada and throughout Europe, and made her Carnegie Hall debut premiering a piece by Fred Lerdahl. She is a faculty member for the Music Niagara Festival’s performance academy. Emma performs on the 1717 Windsor-Weinstein Stradivarius, on loan from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Lynn Sue-a-Quan, Violist, Co-Director
Violist Lynn Sue-A-Quan earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degrees at The Juilliard School. She is currently a member of the Jacksonville Symphony. She has also performed with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic, and has performed as a soloist with orchestras across North America, and at festivals in North America and Europe.
She is a dedicated music educator, and a recipient of the Morse Teaching Artists Fellowship at Juilliard, an award that allowed her to teach students in public schools in New York City.
Astrid Nakamura, Violinist
Astrid Nakamura completed her undergraduate degree at McGill University, followed by a master’s at Rice University. She is a busy chamber, solo and orchestral musician, and has performed with ensembles and orchestras across North America, including the Houston Symphony, Montreal Symphony, Musiqa Houston, Kinetic Ensemble and Ensemble Urbain, among others.
Competition wins include third place at the 2024 Eckhardt-Gramatté Competition, second in the 2022 Golden Violin Competition at McGill University, and first at the 2021 McGill Concerto Competition. She performs on the c.1830-1850 ‘Eckhardt-Gramatte’ Chanot I violin, on loan from the Canada Council for the Arts Musical Instrument Bank.
Astrid is committed to outreach, including teaching at public elementary schools, and concerts in partnership with the MD Anderson Cancer Center, and the University of Houston BRAIN Center.
Matthew Christakos, Cellist
Matthew Christakos was appointed as the new Associate Principal Cello of the New York Philharmonic in January 2024. He won the 2019 Canada Council for the Arts’s Michael Measures Prize, and was named on CBC Music’s 30 Hot Canadian Classical Musicians Under 30 list the same year. He is the former principal cello of the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra.
Matthew began playing the cello at the age of four. After beginning his formal studies at the Royal Conservatory of Music’s Phil and Eli Taylor Performance Academy for Young Artists, where he won the concerto competition and was a featured soloist with the Academy Chamber Orchestra, he went on to study at the Curtis Institute of Music before launching his professional career.
The Venues
On December 28, the quartet will be performing at the Glad Day Bookstore, the world’s oldest LGBT bookstore. Founded in 1970, it’s a welcoming space. The concert is hoped to boost their fundraising efforts (details here).
On December 29, the quartet performs at Blood Brothers Brewing, a craft microbrewery in the west end of the city, newly equipped with a performance stage and upgraded sound systems (along with beer flights to pair with each piece).
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