CD: adjust - Anzû Quartet

Formed in 2020 and comprised of veterans of New York City's vital contemporary music community, the Anzû Quartet — Olivia De Prato (violin), Ashley Bathgate (cello), Ken Thomson (clarinet) and Karl Larson (piano) — is an ensemble dedicated to the music of our time and the recent canon. The quartet’s first full-length studio release of premiere recordings features new works by Thomson (Uneasy) and fellow composer Anna Webber (adjust, which lends the album its title).

Thomson’s Uneasy is relentless, kinetic, and emotive, reflecting the pace and anxieties of modern life, while Webber’s adjust explores the liminal space between classical contemporary music and experimental jazz. Both works, composed between 2019 and 2022, highlight the quartet’s prowess as interpreters and performers of demanding, modern repertoire, and fulfill Anzû’s mission of commissioning and promoting new repertoire for the instrumentation of Messiaen’s elemental “Quartet for the End of Time,” a new recording of which the quartet will release later in 2025.

Produced by Ken Thomson
Tracks 1-3 recorded by Alex Conroy at The Bunker Studio, Brooklyn, NY,
February 7, 2020
Tracks 4-8 recorded by Martin Klebahn at 4tune audio productions, Vienna, Austria, September 23, 2023

Edited by Ken Thomson
Mixed by Mike Tierney at Fieldnotes Studio, Brooklyn, NY, Spring 2024
Mastered by Andreas K. Meyer at Swan Studios, NYC, November 2024

Uneasy i was commissioned by the Johnstone Fund for New Music for Unheard-of//Ensemble.

adjust was commissioned by the Johnstone Fund for New Music for Anzû Quartet.

Cover art: “balance,” Jimmie James, 2020, Berlin