The Strad
February 15, 2023 | Austin Hartman
‘American Stories’ Chronicled: A Contemporary Recording for a Contemporary Time
’My life is one billion percent better today than I could ever have dreamed,’ said composer Ben Shirley, as he recounted for our quartet on a pandemic-era Zoom call detailing how music and marathon training helped inspire his dramatic story of recovery over addiction and homelessness while living in Los Angeles’s notorious Skid Row. His inspirational journey, told in conjunction with three powerful stories from the American experience, creates the musical narrative for our most recent recording project, American Stories, which we recorded in collaboration with our dear friend and venerable colleague, clarinettist Anthony McGill.
Featuring clarinet quintets composed in the last decade by Richard Danielpour, James Lee III, Ben Shirley, and Valerie Coleman, this album weaves together a unique narrative exploring consequential themes of our time, including racially motivated hate crimes, reclassifications of diverse ethnicities, celebrations of recovery and natural beauty, and highlights from the life and successes of American icon Muhammad Ali. We share these stories with the intent of ’empathising with each other, being present in our shared humanity… and embracing the beauty that lies in the diversity of sound and story’ (Anthony McGill, CD liner notes).
Strings Magazine
December 2, 2022 | David Templeton
The Pacifica Quartet’s ‘American Stories’ with Clarinetist Anthony McGill Explores Scenes from the American Experience
Over the course of its 28 years, the Pacifica Quartet has tackled many musical challenges, testing its already impressive core skill sets in countless ways. But until now, with the release of the extraordinary American Stories—a breathtaking collaboration with clarinetist Anthony McGill—the two-time Grammy-winning ensemble has never been asked to sound like Muhammad Ali pummeling an opponent in the boxing ring.
A striking example of the ensemble’s mastery of interpretation and the players’ clear eagerness to try new things, American Stories simultaneously stretches the Pacifica Quartet as performers while inviting listeners to adjust their own expectations of what music is and can do. Featuring compositions by Richard Danielpour, James Lee III, Benjamin J. Shirley, and Valerie Coleman, the pieces have in common a stunning command of narrative.
The New York Times
January 9, 2015 | Zachary Woolfe
So Nice, They Do It Twice
While this kind of “bis” is primarily a vocal phenomenon when it still pops up, it occasionally makes incursions into instrumental music. In November, the excellent Pacifica Quartet appeared at Alice Tully Hall under the auspices of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
Receiving warm applause at the end of the concert, the players sat down for an unexpected encore: the second movement, “Menace,” of Shulamit Ran’s “Glitter, Doom, Shards, Memory” (2012-13), which the group had played in its entirety before intermission. I wish that more ensembles would consider this, particularly in concerts featuring contemporary music that would benefit from being worked deeper into listeners’ ears.
NPR Tiny Desk Concert
August 18, 2014 | Tom Huizenga
Tiny Desk: Pacifica Quartet
With this Tiny Desk Concert by the Grammy-winning Pacifica Quartet, we have the opportunity to explore the world of a single composer. With the arguable exception of Béla Bartók's six string quartets, it's generally accepted that the 15 by Dmitri Shostakovich are the strongest body of quartets since Beethoven.
There's no way around it — the Shostakovich quartets are intense, like page-turning thrillers, as they pull you into his world. They are dark and introspective, witty and sarcastic, and stained with the Soviet-era violence and hardship the composer lived through. He died in 1975.