Sphinx Organization
This programme brings together compelling voices whose music enlarges the chamber tradition through lyricism, imagination, and unmistakable individuality.
Spanning Great Britain and the United States, it moves from the spiritual intensity of Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s Calvary and the poised, deeply expressive voice of William Grant Still, to the rhapsodic richness of Frank Bridge’s Phantasie and the mesmerising stillness of Cassie Kinoshi. Together, these works offer a vivid portrait of twentieth-century chamber music as a space of memory, identity, intimacy, and bold artistic vision.
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Frank Bridge Phantasie for Piano Quartet in F-sharp minor 15’
Frank Bridge’s Phantasie for Piano Quartet belongs to a moment in British music that prized freedom of form, richness of texture, and expressive breadth. As its title suggests, the work unfolds with a rhapsodic, almost improvisatory flow, though its construction is finely controlled. Bridge balances intensity with translucence, giving each instrument a vivid role within a constantly shifting ensemble fabric. The piece is by turns restless, lyrical, and searching, revealing a composer of both technical subtlety and emotional depth. It stands as a powerful example of British chamber music at its most imaginative and refined.
William Grant Still Suite for Cello and Piano 15’
performed by Sterling Elliott, cello
I. African Dancer | II. Mother and Child | III. Gamin
William Grant Still brought to American concert music a voice of remarkable warmth, dignity, and expressive immediacy. In the Suite for Cello and Piano, those qualities emerge with special intimacy. The work sings through the cello’s vocal range and lyrical tenderness, while the piano provides both support and rhythmic life. Still’s music is notable for the grace with which it unites classical forms with vernacular inflections and a distinctly American expressive sensibility. The result is music of refinement, sincerity, and quiet eloquence.
Cassie Kinoshi stillness: two meditations for piano quintet 8’
stillness: two meditations invites the five performers to breathe and improvise together through a series of chord progressions; sound, breath and slowness being central to the evolution of the piece. stillness presents not just as a performance, but as a meditative exercise that encourages the players to connect on a deeper level with the sounds and music they create together. In a society that has become increasingly chaotic and overtly promotes hyper-individualism, the composition seeks to create a moment of community and ritual between the five performers and listeners.
Meditation is a practice that embodies the act of clearing, calming and detaching from reactive thoughts and feelings through cultivating an integration between one’s mind and body. Breathwork is often central to meditation – the steadying of one’s internal rhythm, deep concentration and reaching for an altered, relaxed state of consciousness. When in combination with sound, whether via an instrument or the voice, meditation serves to inspire the individual to sit within and embody a quietness. Since music is a communal act, stillness: two meditations asks both the performers and listeners to share a moment of quietude and connectedness.
Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson String Quartet No. 1, ‘Calvary’ 11’
I. Allegro | II. Adagio | III. Allegro vivace
Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson was a composer, conductor, and pianist of extraordinary stylistic range, whose work moved fluently among concert music, jazz, dance, film, and the Black church tradition. His String Quartet No. 1, ‘Calvary’, is a work of gripping concentration and spiritual weight. The title suggests suffering, witness, and transcendence, and the music unfolds with a sense of urgency that feels both dramatic and deeply inward. Perkinson’s voice is distinctive in the way it fuses formal command with emotional directness, creating music that is taut, searching, and resonant with layered cultural memory.
