PRESS RELEASE
Contact: Earle Kittleman, 719-539-6153
3 p.m., Sunday, March 28
VERONIKA STRING QUARTET DEBUTS IN SALIDA AT STEAMPLANT EVENT CENTER
SALIDA, CO–The acclaimed Veronika String Quartet of Pueblo, CO will make its debut appearance in Salida at 3 p.m., Sunday, March 28, performing at the SteamPlant Event Center on the Arkansas River in the downtown historic district.
“Mostly Made in America” is the theme of the concert. They will play Quartet for Strings Op.89 by early 20th century American composer Amy Beach; the “American” quartet in F. Major, Op. 96 by Antonin Dvorak and String Quartet in D Major, K.499, “Hoffmeister” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Tickets are onsale for $15 at the SteamPlant theater, 220 West Sackett Ave.; 719-530-0933, or online at SalidaSteamPlant.org.
The all-female Veronika String Quartet formed in Russia in 1989 and took top awards while touring the music capitals of the world. For the past ten years, while serving as artists-in-residence at Colorado State University-Pueblo, the Quartet has gained recognition throughout Colorado for its commitment to the classical repertoire and lesser known works by American composers. The Quartet appears frequently on NPR’s Colorado Spotlight and its acclaimed concert series in Pueblo and Colorado Springs.
Violinists Veronika Afanassieva and Katrine Garibova founded the Quartet while studying music in Moscow. Joining the group later were Moscow trained violist Ekaterina Dobrotvorskaia and American cellist Mary Artmann. Premieres and recordings of music by Charles Eakin, Carlton Gamer, Lawrence Leighton Smith and Augusta Read Thomas have added to the groups notoriety along with collaborations with the American and Fine Arts Quartets.
A child prodigy, Amy Beach made her debut playing piano in Boston in 1883. Later she gave up her recital career to become America’s first successful woman composer. The Veronikas will play one of her many chamber works. She also wrote songs for voice and piano, sacred works and a symphony and opera.
Antonin Dvorak’s “American” quartet employs themes he heard while living in this country. Invited to be director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York in 1891, the Czech composer did for America what he had done in his homeland, develop indigenous songs and rhythms into great music. His masterpiece Ninth Symphony “New World” laid the groundwork for an emerging national music of America.
From a century earlier, Mozart is on the program to represent the classic period in Western music. Mozart transformed the rigid structure of the music that preceded him into a popular style that endures to this day.
The concert is sponsored by the Friends of the SteamPlant who encourage a broad range of musical and theatrical entertainment to be staged at the expanded facility. The first electric generating plant in Salida supplied power to the railyards and the first arc lights on city street in 1887. Rehabilitation of the historic structure began in the 1980s. It now houses the SteamPlant theater and ballroom. Kitchen and meeting rooms were added last year so that the complex could be operated as a year-round performing arts and conference center.
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