LOCATION

The Betsy Hotel Gallery
1433 Collins Avenue
3139 Miami Beach, FL
United States
See map: Google Maps
November 7, 2021, 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm

Elgar String Quartet in E minor, Op. 83 (1918) + Elgar Poems (2010) (Carlos Pintado)
Coleridge- Taylor Five Fantasiestucke, Op. 5 (1896)
Vaughan Williams String Quartet #1, in G minor (1908)

Sir Edward William Elgar (1857-1934) was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Although Elgar is often regarded as a typically English composer, most of his musical influences were not from England but from continental Europe. He felt himself to be an outsider, not only musically, but socially. The String Quartet in E minor, Op. 83, was one of three major chamber music works composed by Elgar in 1918.

Carlos Pintado is a Cuban–American writer, playwright and award-winning poet who immigrated to the United States in the early 90s. He received the prestigious 2014 Paz Prize for Poetry for his book Nine coins/Nueve Monedas awarded by the National Poetry Series and published in a bilingual edition by Akashic Press. His book Autorretrato en azul received the Sant Jordi’s International Prize for Poetry and his El azar y los tesoros was one of the finalists for Adonais Prize in 2008. He also contributed to the book The exile Experience: a journey to freedom, coordinated by Cuban American music producer Emilio Estefan. In September 2015, The New York Times Magazine published his poem “The moon”, selected by US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey. Some of his works have been published in World Literature Today, The American Poetry Review, The New York Times, Raspa Magazine, among others.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) was an English composer and conductor. He was born in London, to Alice Hare Martin, an English woman, and Dr. Daniel Peter Hughes Taylor, a Krio from Sierra Leone. His mother named her son Samuel Coleridge- Taylor after the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. His father was descended from African-American slaves who were freed by the British and evacuated from the colonies at the end of the Revolutionary War; some 3,000 of these Black Loyalists resettled in Nova Scotia. Others were resettled in London and the Caribbean. In 1792 some 1200 blacks from Nova Scotia chose to leave what they considered a hostile climate and society, and moved to Sierra Leone, which the British had established as a colony for free blacks. At the age of seventeen Coleridge-Taylor became impassioned by the music of Dvořák. That love of Dvořák stayed with him his whole life. He achieved such success that he was referred to by white New York musicians as the “African Mahler” during three tours of the United States in the early 1900s. He was known for his three cantatas on the epic poem, Song of Hiawatha by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Coleridge-Taylor was a prolific composer during his short life. In 1912 he died of pneumonia two weeks after his 37th birthday. In America public schools were named after him in Louisville, Kentucky, and Baltimore, Maryland.

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) was an English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over sixty years. Strongly influenced by Tudor music and English folk-song, his output marked a decisive break in British music from its German-dominated style of the 19th century. Vaughan Williams did not write much instrumental chamber music. His two string quartets lie about thirty years apart. He completed the first after studying with Ravel (although a friend said it sounded more like he’d “been having tea with Debussy”) and it does seem kin to Ravel’s own quartet, though not at quite the same level of blazing masterpiece.

Based on guidance from national and local health officials, masks and proof of a recent negative COVID-19 test are required. Guests may volunteer proof of vaccination in lieu of a negative test.