PUBLIQuartet bringing improv chamber music to Hancher stage in Iowa City

Improvisation isn’t the usual part of classical chamber music training, but stepping into the unusual has been freeing for members of PUBLIQuartet.

The New York-based string quartet is making its first trip to Iowa City for a Hancher performance Nov. 21, along with student workshops.

“We believe everybody can improvise. We’re improvising right now as we speak, and interacting spontaneously,” violinist Jannina Norpoth said during a recent Zoom interview with The Gazette and violist Nick Revel.

“We’ve done improvisation workshops for all ages, all levels. We’ve even done them for non-musicians,” Norpoth added. “It’s really fun to challenge people’s creativity and watch them go to a place that might be uncomfortable for them, and rise to overcome that challenge.”

But improvisation within the classical realm is nothing new.

“I think a lot of us classical musicians forget that almost all of our favorite composers were great improvisers, and that’s mostly how they wrote,” Revel said. “They sat down at the piano and their instrument, they just started playing, and then they transcribed the ideas that came out.”

“So many composers like Mozart and Beethoven and Chopin and Paganini were great improvisers,” Norpoth said. “Chopin would just command these audiences where he just improvised. Mozart would too. That’s sort of a lost art within classical music that is being explored in today’s works, too.

“And also, as Nick was saying, music has always been controversial. There were riots when ‘The Rite of Spring’ was played, and Beethoven symphonies, too. We’ve always challenged what we weren’t ready to hear. And I think nothing’s different for this generation of composers.

“It’s also not new to borrow from folk music,” she added. “Dvorak was doing it, and Bartok was doing it, Mozart was doing it. We’re borrowing from the folk music of today, and that might be gospel, that might be folk music, that might be electronic music, and so those are new sounds that people aren’t necessarily comfortable hearing in classical music and improvisation, too.

“I think it’s a good conversation. I think we should be having it,” she said, “but it’s also important to remember the context and that current composers are listening to the sounds that are current around them, and they’re using that as inspiration.”

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Musical journey

PUBLIQuartet’s roots reach back to Revel’s college years at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., from 2004 to 2008. There, the Wilton, Conn., native played chamber music with violinist Curtis Stewart from New York City. They also put together “an informal band,” where they experimented with composition and improvisation.

“We kind of formed a musical bond there,” Revel said.

Both ended up freelancing in New York City, where they found themselves in the right place at the wrong time, giving rise to the quartet. They got lost going to a gig on Long Island and arrived 40 minutes late, because a bridge on their route had been renamed, and didn’t show up on their electronic map.

After doing “the walk of shame” through the orchestra sections to take their seats, they spent the break “commiserating about the gig and our stupidity for not leaving enough time,” Revel said.

That’s when they met Amanda Gookin, who would become the founding cellist for PUBLIQuartet. She was putting together an educational project and wanted to assemble a string quartet. Violinist Jessie Montgomery landed the fourth spot, and even though Gookin’s educational project didn’t materialize, “we liked playing together enough to keep going,” Revel said, “and that’s how the group started.”

Since forming in 2010, the ensemble has garnered a Grammy nomination for its 2022 album, “What is American”; won the 2013 Concert Artists Guild New Music/New Places award; and in 2019 received Chamber Music America’s Visionary Award “for outstanding and innovative approaches to contemporary classical, jazz and world chamber music.”

The Washington Post hailed PUBLIQuartet as “a perfect encapsulation of today’s trends in chamber music.” The ensemble has played in Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center, as well as jazz festivals in Montreal, Newport, R.I., and Detroit, and among its artist residency sites was New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Original members Gookin and Montgomery have left the group, with Norpoth and cellist Hamilton Berry stepping into those vacancies.

Now in their late 30s and early 40s, all have different backgrounds and come from different parts of the country, listened to different music growing up, and had different experiences studying in conservatories. So each brings a different strength to the ensemble.

Revel said he’s “really into production and sound engineering,” doing a lot of recording at his home in Queens. He’s found a way to improvise to music he’s recorded, which he said is “a really exciting process,” and allows him to layer sounds and create textures, which in turn, helps him work on his compositional voice. He also handles the ensemble’s financial records and bookkeeping.

He noted that since Stewart’s musical parents were into improvisation, that’s the language he grew up with. That “really helped shape his ability to navigate a huge variety of musical spaces,” Revel said.

Norpoth added that she does the group’s social media; cellist Berry does a lot of the communication and mailing lists; Stewart handles networking; and they all share in writing grants.

As the only woman in the group, Norpoth, who lives in Brooklyn, said she also brings that perspective to the table — along with her values and stubbornness.

“I’m not afraid to ask questions of my colleagues, and sometimes I sway them in directions that maybe they wouldn’t otherwise go,” she said, “but I think that can be said for any member of the group. We’re all bringing in a lot of creative ideas.

The Detroit native and daughter of jazz great Spencer Barefield, Norpoth also brings her background as an improviser, growing up around avant garde jazz music.

“Even though I didn’t physically learn that language growing up, it was in my ears and in my music,” she said, adding that as she developed her improvisational skills, it has led to collaborations with her father and the composers from whom the ensemble has commissioned pieces.

She also cites her love of rock ’n’ roll and her dedication to performing works by composers underserved in classical music — Black composers, women, composers of color and others who have been historically marginalized.

She pointed out that Berry also brings “an amazing sense of diplomacy to the quartet,” as well as an academic background in music and English, which Norpoth considers “extraordinarily valuable.”

Hancher concert

Even though the quartet has a vast catalog for shaping a concert, when they come to Hancher, they will perform a program made up entirely of Montgomery’s works. Now serving as Hancher’s 2024—2025 composer-in-residence, Montgomery also will perform in the concert.

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They’ve woven some of her works into other concerts, but Norpoth said she not sure they’ve done an entire program of Montgomery’s works.

She called the prospect “exciting,” saying “her music is super-beloved to us and we’ve championed her works for the entirety of the quartet.”

The audience will be seated onstage on three sides of the ensemble, in what Hancher’s website describes as a thrust configuration “used primarily for daring, intimate and immediate performance.”

“I didn’t realize that was going to be the case, but that’s very cool,” Norpoth said. “ … I think we actually prefer that — any instance where we can really be intimate with the audience.

“A lot of our program and programming is taking the time to interact with the audience and to talk to the audience, and sometimes to even engage them in the performance of some sort of physical way, whether it be clapping or singing or inviting them to join us somehow. So I think that makes perfect sense for us,” she said.

“We’re comfortable also in a variety of venues, from the concert hall to a small club to playing outside at a protest. The name PUBLIQuartet — there’s a reason for that, and it’s because accessibility to our craft is very integral to our mission.”

Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com