Sharon, Conn. — Yes, Music Mountain’s 95th summer season is still a few months off. But in the meantime, the venue is partnering with the newly restored Hotchkiss Library to present a three-part winter concert series, which kicks off on January 21 with the Ulysses Quartet, joined on clarinet by Music Mountain Artistic Director Oskar Espina Ruiz.
Here is the group’s program for the 21st:
- Germaine Tailleferre — String Quartet
- Traditional — Hur var du i aftes så sildig
- Traditional — Unst Boat Song
- Traditional — The Dromer
- Seth Grosshandler — Clarinet Quintet (10’)
- Beethoven — String Quartet in F minor, Op. 18, No. 4
Seth Grosshandler’s Suite for Clarinet Quintet received its premiere performance from the Ulysses Quartet and Oskar Espina Ruiz at the Treetops Chamber Music Society in New Canaan, Conn., and at Music Mountain in the spring and summer of 2023. Having retired in 2018 from his gig as a lawyer, Mr. Grosshandler is now occupied as a composer and concert pianist, performing his own and others’ works. He earned a bachelor’s degree in music from Reed College in Portland, Ore. in 1979 but spent a year in Paris, France, studying composition and orchestration before studying law.
Founded in 2015, the Ulysses Quartet won the grand prize and gold medal in the senior string division of the 2016 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and first prize in the 2018 Schoenfeld International String Competition. The group has appeared at such venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Jordan Hall, the Picasso Museum in Málaga, and Washington’s National Gallery of Art. The quartet, whose members come from Canada, the United States, and Taiwan, was named after Homer’s “Odyssey.” American Record Guide has written of the Ulysses’ “exceptional control of dynamic contrasts, structural integrity, expressive intensity, and perfection of ensemble” and described one of the group’s Beethoven performances as “a transcendent experience, with a climax of almost unbearable poignancy.”
Oskar Espina Ruiz has collaborated with the American, Argus, Ariel, Cassatt, Daedalus, Escher, Shanghai, Ulysses, and Verona quartets; the Quintet of the Americas; pianists Benjamin Hochman, Ursula Oppens, and Anthony Newman; and musicians of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. He was a featured soloist at the 20th Tokyo Summer Festival, European Mozart Academy, Festival Internacional de Música Clásica Contemporánea de Lima. He has recorded for the Bridge, Kobaltone, and Prion labels. Ruiz has performed at venues in St. Petersburg, Russia; New York City; Washington, D.C.; Moscow; Madrid; Tokyo; Beijing; Shanghai; and Hong Kong, appearing as soloist with the Petersburg State Academic Symphony, St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic, Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica de la Ciudad de Asunción in Paraguay, and Spain’s Bilbao Symphony.
Hear the Ulysses Quartet with clarinetist Oskar Espina Ruiz on Sunday, January 21, 3 p.m., at the Hotchkiss Library, 10 Upper Main Street, Sharon, CT, 06069. Registration is required (sign up here.) For more information, visit the library’s website or call (860) 364-5041.
