PBS Wisconsin Music & Arts

Susan Chandler

Madeline Island Chamber Music commissioned a piece to be written by the composer Caroline Shaw for Brooklyn Rider. Caroline Shaw is this incredible young composer. She is the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for music.

Nicholas Cords

So, I've actually known her since she was about that tall and she would come to our concerts. I mean, she's just an amazing composer who has, I think, at her very heart, her very compositional heart is a string quartet

Jonathan Swartz

And Brooklyn Rider thought that it would be meaningful in the context today to engage new composers and get them to write with their perspectives on healing and music.

Nicholas Cords

It's a project called "Healing Modes" and it's using Beethoven's "Opus 132," his great late string quartet. We have five composers who are writing for this project to shed light on what healing and music means in today's context.

Colin Jacobsen

First of all, it was just great having her here because we got to play it for her before the performance and have her do some last-minute tweaks based on how it was coming across to her. So that's the lab aspect of having a living composer there.

Nicholas Cords

We only got the piece on Tuesday. And so there truly, truly was a "wet ink" feeling to what was going on but actually that, that is totally a part of the tradition. You know, playing the music while the ink is still drying on the page.

Susan Chandler

They are fearless as a group. Brooklyn Rider is just fearless, and very, very good with contemporary music so I know it's going to be terrific.

cheers and applause

cheers and applause

plinking string