Eliot Burk

School of Music, Experimental Sound Practices, MFA1

String Quartets for Two Performers

Before COVID, I saved up to purchase the instruments of a String Quartet (2 Violins, Viola, Cello). I wanted to have the whole ensemble so that I could play them without being restricted to what most performers are comfortable doing to their own instruments.

But due to the pandemic, it wasn't safe to meet with 3 other people as I had planned. Thankfully, my housemate, Z.A. Stenger was more than happy to still play music with me. Four instruments and two people led naturally to the String Quartets for Two Performers.

In these pieces, we assemble the instruments into complex, interdependent, sculptural-musical systems, where our decisions as performer-composers interact in unpredictable ways with the system & resulting sounds.

Collaborators: Z.A. Stenger