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Jupiter and Jasper Quartets at the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society
Tom Purdom
The octet for strings is a beautiful form, but it has a drawback: eight string players must cooperate flawlessly without the aid of a conductor. The Jupiter and Jasper quartets have the advantage that they’re related via birth and marriage and seem to have avoided the ailments that plague the dysfunctional families celebrated in contemporary plays and novels. For their Philadelphia Chamber Music Society appearance, they’ll collaborate on two popular masterpieces by Shostakovich and Mendelssohn and present the Philadelphia premiere of a 2011 octet by American composer Dan Visconti. For the Visconti, they’ll replace a violin with an Indian drone instrument called a shruti box and create a musical portrait of the “joyful chaos” of life in a large family.
January 15, 8pm at the Perelman Theater, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. $24, $10 student (plus handling fee and Kimmel Center fee). 215-569-8080 or www.pcmsconcerts.org
Photo: A shruti box. Now that you know what one looks like, aren't you curious about how it sounds?
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