Extending String Quartet: Island Suite

Songwriter, composer, pianist and cellist Ayanna Witter-Johnson was inspired by Jamaican folk singing and tells the story of her ancestors with her “Island Suite” for the Solem Quartet. Almost a century before her, Bartók also immersed himself in folk music from Eastern Europe. And a hundred years before that, Beethoven transcended time in his Grosse Fuge; music that, as Stravinsky said, will always sound contemporary.

In their series Beethoven Bartók Now, the musicians of the English Solem Quartet combine the work of these two giants of music history with brand-new compositions. Their intention is to shed a new light on these iconic works by Beethoven and Bartók and to place both composers in a new context.