During a deliriously entertaining performance by New York’s Attacca Quartet at the Taube Atrium Theater, it seemed everyone was having an engrossing, high time.
By everyone, I mean the fabulous four string players, the packed audience that made their feelings clearly known with cheers and loud applause, and the beaming composer Caroline Shaw, who doubled as the evening’s vocalist.
Presented by San Francisco Performances on Sunday, April 12, it was an 80-minute, all-Shaw bill. Her music referenced a wide range of musical influences from Beethoven to Billy Joel. The program also drew inspiration from nature, with a piece about an evergreen tree and another titled “Valencia.”
“It’s about an orange,” cellist Andrew Yee deadpanned before the musicians launched into the piece.
Wit, both verbal and musical, was a key component of the program. But yearning, rapture, tension and resolution — earmarks of Shaw’s works — were also on full display.
Shaw’s predominantly tonal compositions deployed alluring melodies and harmonies in tightly structured forms. Though the Grammy-winning composer measures out time in silence as much as by sound, the sounds themselves were vivid. A sweet harmony dissolving into a pool of dissonance. A creaking groan pushing toward a tenderly resolved chord.
Phrases offered up by one instrument were subtly altered by another. The new idea was then taken up by all four musicians. The results were energizingly unpredictable and foot-tappingly insistent.
The concert got off to a bravura start with “Blueprint,” which quoted and cheerfully corrupted some high velocity passages from a Beethoven string quartet. Shaw compared it to “sight-reading Beethoven after a glass of wine.”
The setting featured soft pizzicati and harmonies faintly reminiscent of medieval music. Seated on a stool like a nightclub performer, Shaw sang the French lyrics about lovers reluctant to part at dawn in a voice more natural than polished. She came across authentically here and in “And So,” a longer song that followed. The sibilant-rich lyrics invoked poet Gertrude Stein’s famous “a rose is a rose is a rose” and Joel’s “And So It Goes.”
In “Three Essays,” one of the two extended instrumental pieces, soft spare passages gave way to bursts of Brahms-like intensity. “The Evergreen,” matched by a wash of green light, opened with hushed harmonics before broadening out into intricate, evolving material, built from a poignant four-note cell.
With a repertoire that spans Haydn to video game music and includes collaborations with Billie Eilish and filmmaker Ken Burns, the Attacca Quartet goes their own unpredictable way, up to and including their wardrobe choices. First violinist Amy Schroeder wore a designer-looking black gown, while violist Nathan Schram chose white tennis shoes with a T-shirt under his sport jacket. Cellist Yee selected a simple Creamsicle-colored long dress. Second violinist Domenic Salerni was in basic black.
The visuals mattered. Each of these superb artists displayed a distinctive musical character that created a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Yes, they kept their eyes on each other, but their communication felt telepathic.
In Shaw, a Pulitzer Prize winner who won at 30 and is now 43, has written for Yo-Yo Ma, the FX/Hulu series “Fleishman Is in Trouble” and the current Broadway revival of “Death of a Salesman,” Attacca has an ideal partner.
Invited to hum a steady note through Shaw’s “Other Song,” the audience became part of the performance well. Like the musicians onstage, they eagerly played their part and did it well.
Steven Winn is a freelance writer. This review is provided in partnership with the San Francisco Chronicle.
