Earplay is dedicated to the performance and recording of new chamber music. It’s an evolving genre where composers and musicians freely experiment with musical structure, rhythm, and sounds, challenging the audience to broaden its concept of music with new emotional and auditory experiences. Earplay concerts feature the Earplayers, a group of artists whose lyrical and ferocious style provides eloquent, vivid performances of today’s finest chamber music. Founded in 1985 by a consortium of composers and musicians, Earplay has performed over 600 works by more than 350 composers in its 38-year history, including 158 world premieres and 93 new works commissioned by the ensemble.
Their program The Poetry of Physics features the World Premiere of Miguel Chuaqui’s Ad Hoc (2023) for clarinet and viola, an Earplay commission from the stellar Chilean-American composer dedicated to the great American composer Andrew Imbre. The West Coast Premiere of Suzanne Sorkin’s String Trio in Two Movements for violin, viola and cello, highly charged, beautifully crafted, and loaded with intricate counterpoint. Kaija Saariaho’s Light and Matter (2014), for violin, cello and piano an evocative trio informed by shards of kinetic energy, flickering spin, luminous textures and more. Ines Thiebaut’s panta rhei (2022) for piano with electronics. The Greek Heraclitus’ (5th century BCE) epigramatic panta rhei, meaning “everything flows”, inspires an ever self-renewing stream of dialogue between pianist and electronic sounds. And the West Coast Premiere of Yotam Haber’s Estro Poetico-armonico II (2014) for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano. Like an ancient music passed down from afar, a delicate and poetic re-imagining of Benedetto Marcello’s 18 th century psalm setting.