invisible cites
Fifty-FIVE Pieces FOR STRING QUARTET (in-progress)
Invisible Cities - Alissa Rupp
String Quartet
Made Possible by the City of Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, and by the Lucas Arts Residency Program at the Montalvo Arts Center.
Premiere: March 2014, Chapel Performance Space, Seattle WA, Corigliano String Quartet. (Performance of 5 “cities” in progress)
Live Recording: Michael Jinsoo Lim, violin Emilie Choi, violin Melia Watras, viola Sonja Myklebust, cello - performing ZOE.
ZOE
“If existence in all its moments
is all of itself, Zoe is the place of indivisible existence.”
PROGRAM NOTES
In the summer of 2010, I began sketching a new work for string quartet. These sketches turned into a long-term plan to write a cycle of 55 pieces for string quartet (2-5 minutes each) - a project that would prove to last several years, indeed decades, and is still in progress. The cycle revolves around the chapters of a novella called Invisible Cites by Italo Calvino. Calvino’s book is a magical and fantastical tale about a fictional conversation between Marco Polo, the great Viennese explorer, and Kublai Kahn, the great emperor. Polo describes 55 imaginary cites to Khan, and though the emperor suspects that Polo is finding these cities in his imagination, he can’t resit the stories, as the descriptions themselves are profoundly beautiful and poetic. They create a magical world of strange and mystical cities.
In its final form, these 55 movements for string quartet will be like an open book: available to perform in any number and any order, creating a world of “cities” for an adventurous string quartet to explore in the spirit of Marco Polo.
After many starts and stops, the cycle now stands at 10 completed pieces. The anticipated completion is sometime, soon, or sooner.