February 28 - Alone Together (online presentation, pay what you wish)

The online opening of the 2021 season will continue to explore the unique time and place we find ourselves in, and the new kinds of creativity and connection that we have been forced to find. The program opens with Angélica Negrón's Marejada, a piece written in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically to be played from separate locations via a video conferencing platform. The Hausmann Quartet will return to the Berkeley for Haydn's groundbreaking Opus 20, No. 4 Quartet, paired with Grazyna Bacewicz's dynamic String Quartet no. 4 from 1951. The concert concludes with an in person version of Marejada, in the composer's words: "an invitation to sonically escape from your room and to actively imagine and immerse yourself in a different place and time." February's video presentation will  remain available for viewing through March 7.

Two Haydn quartets bookend a trio of compact but powerfully adventurous works from the 20th and 21st centuries in the Hausmann Quartet's long-awaited return to live, in person performance. This concert will be held on the outdoor deck of the Berkeley, and features works by Silvestre Revueltas (the father of Mexican musical modernism), Alexandra Vrebalov (My Desert, My Rose from 2015) and Kerwin Young's brief but evocative Peace on the Left, Justice on the Right, written in response to the murder of George Floyd. Audience members will once again be able to enjoy the idyllic sights and sounds of San Diego's harbor as they experience live music.

A world premiere by Joshua Roman is the centerpiece of this program. Originally scheduled for 2020, Roman's piece (commissioned for the Hausmann Quartet and the Haydn Voyages series) is a meditation on the unique setting and era we find ourselves in today. This concert includes a novel collection of movements from some of Haydn's contemporaries (St. Georges, Vanhal, Dittersdorf and Mozart) assembled to create a kind of "Composite Classical" Quartet, also a world premiere in its own way. Another Hausmann pandemic-era initiative was a composition competition, and the winning submission by Yangfan Xu will be featured on this show. The audience will be sent off into the San Diego sunset with Haydn's evocative "Dream" quartet (op. 50/5),

The sixth season closes with a celebration of beats that make us move, wherever and whoever we are. Music by Californian minimalist Terry Riley meets John Adams and recently departed jazz giant Chick Corea, as well as a trip back in time a few hundred years for some of the earliest music written for four string instruments (by Gregorio Allegri). Haydn's place on the program may represent the least funky beat, but dance moves are still welcome.