Aidan Vass & Quartet Aido: An Evening of Chamber Music
- Date and Venue
- Tuesday, June 10, 2025 at 2:00 AM
- Schoenberg Hall - UCLA
- Performers
- Quartet Aido, Students of the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music
Join us for a delightful evening at UCLA, filled with world premieres of classical chamber works by Aidan Vass. This in-person event will take place at Schoenberg Hall, and will feature the composer himself on piano and the wonderful Quartet Aido, a LA-based string quartet. Immerse yourself in the enchanting melodies and intricate harmonies of Vass's classical music in the heart of the city. Grab your tickets now and get ready for a night to remember!
Program
Community Music
mixed brass ensemble
Community Music is a piece that requires each player to distribute the leadership responsibility amongst themselves. Every gesture is mutually agreed on before it proceeds.
c. 3 minutes
2025
Piano Sonata
solo piano
- I. Andante(c. 10 minutes)
- II. Allegretto(c. 2 minutes)
- III. Largo(c. 6 minutes)
- IV. Presto(c. 4 minutes)
Piano Sonata took on a lot of different faces as the writing process took place. There were a lot of very fundamental ideas I wanted to stretch out really far - things like space, contour, melody. I wanted to create a set of works that each try to push some parameter to its extreme. But as the work progressed, I was continually drawn to the idea of musical axes, not just as compositional devices, but as a means of representing a "mirror-like" quality that allowed me to look into my own life and see how these fundamental parameters seem to derive from people and experiences in my life.
Andante and Allegretto aim to push the envelope of space as much as possible. The subtraction-gesture in the opening and throughout the rest feels to me like a doorway into the space between the notes, unlocking a sort of "inverted" melody. At the climax of Andante, the sonorities of the movement collide, emulating this notion of compressing the previously explored space. Allegretto serves as a contrast point for Andante. Rather than exploring the space, Allegretto defines a rigid space at the start and refuses to deviate.
Largo and Presto push a different envelope forward. Largo is a very personal piece to me, and the only piece in the set to really derive around a florid melody. This melodic content for me pushes the work into a more introspective state, and Presto follows this up with a realized mirror. In Presto, the notion of an axis is slowly developed more and more up until the ending, where the axis around E and Eb is fully exploded, and the mirror-like introspection comes to a conclusion.
c. 22 minutes
2025
String Quartet
string quartet
- I. Invocation to St. Maximilian Kolbe(c. 6 minutes)
- II. First Steps, after Millet(c. 5 minutes)
- III. Grace(c. 4.5 minutes)
- IV. Chez le Père Lathuille(c. 6.5 minutes)
- V. Revocation of Grace(c. 4 minutes)
String Quartet (2025) covers a wide range of introspection on the subject of love.
I.
The first movement, Invocation to St. Maximilian Kolbe, recalls the story of St. Maximilian Kolbe and his self-sacrifice at Auschwitz in 1941, during which he gave his life to set a man free to return to his family - a true act of sacrificing the self for the good of the other.
II.
The second movement is loosely based on the painting of the same name by van Gogh, in which a child is seen yearning for her father's arms.
III.
In Grace, a steady stream of pulse overcomes the quartet. This movement is palindromic and serves as the thematic entry point into the work as a whole.
IV.
Chez le Père Lathuille is loosely based on the painting of the same name by Édouard Manet, in which the subject is infatuated by the lover he pursues.
V.
Revocation of Grace is a reflection on acts of hate and malice, those acts in which the other is sacrificed for the self.
c. 27 minutes
2025
