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Miro Quartet performs 'Over The Rainbow' / theStrad

The Miró Quartet presents Home, a new album that explores the many concepts of what the term “home” can mean. Its complexity is woven in a variety of ways into the music: the pieces, all composed by Americans past and present, invite you to feel, reflect, and engage in Miró’s world. In this regard, the album also represents the United States, Miró’s artistic home, in many ways. The program presents two new commissions by Kevin Puts and Caroline Shaw, as well as known and lesser known works by George Walker and Samuel Barber.

This is the Miró Quartet’s second album on Pentatone, following their recording of Beethoven’s Complete String Quartets (2019).

“The Miró Quartet is so excited to be releasing our new album ‘Home’. This album is the culmination of a long and creative process of discovery, exploring our relationships with living composers as well as exploring and recording the existing core repertoire of American string quartet music. It has been an exciting musical journey that ultimately has brought us home as musicians in a new and special way.” - The Miró Quartet

Excerpts from the liner notes: “We all have a home on this planet, and yet no matter how settled and comfortable it may be, aren’t all of us in a sense ever in search of our “true home”, however we define that individually?

Home represents stability and safety, yet human life is a journey of constant change, acquisition and loss, a journey traveling away from our origins, and hopefully onwards towards our goals, our true home.


theStrad writes….The quartet performs an ode to its hometown of Austin in a track featured on its new album Home, out 10 May

The Miró Quartet celebrates its hometown of Austin, TX, in this music video performance of ‘Over the rainbow’ by Harold Arlen. The work is an arrangement of the song that featured in the film The Wizard of Oz, done by William Ryden.

Celebrating 30 years in 2025, the Texas-based quartet’s new album Home explores the the many meanings of ‘home’ through commissions by Kevin Puts and Caroline Shaw, paired with works by George Walker and Samuel Barber.

’This album is the culmination of a long and creative process of discovery, exploring our relationships with living composers as well as exploring and recording the existing core repertoire of American string quartet music,’ says the quartet.

’It has been an exciting musical journey that ultimately has brought us home as musicians in a new and special way. To us, Home represents stability and safety, yet human life is a journey of constant change, acquisition and loss. We travel away from our origins, and hopefully onwards towards our goals, our vision of true home. And as much as needing and having a home is a universal experience, leaving a home and starting life’s journey out on one’s own is also a pivotal moment of growth for every one of us.’

The Miró Quartet will feature in the June 2024 Session Report of The Strad.

Home is out on 10 May 2024 on Pentatone. 
 

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