Stellari String Quartet (John Edwards/Charlotte Hug/Marcio Mattos/Philipp Wachsmann)
Philipp Wachsmann © Caroline Forbes
"Refreshingly, the music here seeks to neither emulate nor deliberately avoid conventional notions of the string quartet. Instead, each of the four players brings their own distinctive voice and approach to their instrument plus openness to the music produced by the others. . . . Telltale trademark traces of the individuals remain evident - Wachsmann's soaring glissandi, Hug's simultaneous bowing of all four viola strings, the gravitas of Mattos's stately bowing, Edwards' percussive blows to the body of his bass - yet the individual voices are more often subsumed into a dialogue in which their contributions overlap both in time and in frequency, creating a whole greater than any of its parts." John Eyles, All About Jazz
"Stellari String Quartet's approach is wholly curious and unique, one only possible after mastering - and deconstructing - a substantial, disparate repertoire: the members combine lyrical, melodic writing, compositional systems of the 20th Century masters of the genre (i.e. Webern, Bartók) and astute technical cunning earned from extensive formal training, all wrapped in an extemporized-yet-directional package. . . . Varying from rich and full to spidery and arpeggiated to lilting to somber, the group, acting as a single unit - though one wielding twenty flailing appendages - follows a timbre-dictated trail of pinches, plucks, trills, harmonics, scordatura, fragmented quotations, vibrato expressivo, double and triple stops and glissandi, continually constricting the works with these dizzying gestures; even the quieter moments . . . and climax points . . . smack of juxtaposed yin and yang just at the point of imbalance." - Dave Madden, The Squid's Ear
emanemdisc.com/E5006
efi.group.shef.ac.uk/musician/medwards
charlottehug.ch
musiclay.co.uk
efi.group.shef.ac.uk/mwachs