5 Boroughs Music Festival presents members of The Harlem Chamber Players
$20 ($15 senior/student)
- Ashley Horne, violin
- Claire Chan, violin
- William Frampton, viola
- Wayne Smith, cello
5BMF’s 2021-2022 Season closes with two performances by members of the Harlem Chamber Players, true pillars of the Uptown music scene whose brilliant, innovative programs have served a loyal following of music lovers in Harlem and beyond for nearly 15 years.
Join us this June as we present members of the HCP in two thrilling concerts: at Broadway Presbyterian Church — one of the ensemble’s home venues — and at Bronx House, marking their borough debut! Additionally, Friday’s performance will be hosted by historian and frequent HCP guest Eric K. Washington, author of Boss of the Grips: The Life of James H. Williams and the Red Caps of Grand Central Terminal.
The members of HCP’s string quartet will perform a program of works by two musical omnivores: Tania León and Antonín Dvořák. About Esencia, León describes the piece as a reflection of some of the ways in which her “personal musical language has syncretized [her] cultural experiences” through a "myriad of syncopated gestures indigenous of: son, danzon, guajiras, montunos; […] a melody that hearkens the sound of the quena, the traditional flute of the Andes; [and] a crossover of Coplandesque harmonic overtones".
Dvořák was himself a vociferous synthesizer of influences; known especially in the US for his works that blend various American musics, he naturally did the same with the folk music of his native Czech homeland. His String Quartet No. 11 has the feel and scale of a grand tone poem: a glorious and epic opening movement, a scherzo that adopts the classic Czech furiant dance rhythm, and one of the finest slow movements in the quartet repertory, a wistful hidden gem.