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New String Quartet Brings “Ritmo y Son” To  West Haven

Lucy Gellman | August 2nd, 2024

New String Quartet Brings “Ritmo y Son” To West Haven

Culture & Community  |  Debbie Hesse  |  Music  |  Arts & Culture  |  West Haven  |  Arts & Anti-racism  |  ArtsWest CT

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The Ritmo y Son String Quartet. Lucy Gellman Photos.

The first, melancholic strains of Ástor Piazzolla’s “Oblivion” had started to drift over the West Haven Green, full of depth and longing, when Liliana Cutler took her brother Josiah by the hand. On the bandstand, violin and viola chased each other through the warm evening, weaving around the structure’s sturdy beams. Cello slipped in beneath them, and gave the tango legs. 

Back on the patio, Liliana and Josiah lifted their arms, bridging the thousands of miles to Piazzolla’s Argentina with a tiny, imprecise two step. 

Tuesday evening, their dance captured the spirit of “Canciones,” the inaugural performance of the Ritmo Y Son String Quartet on the West Haven Green. Founded earlier this year, the quartet aims to amplify the music of Hispanic and Latine composers past and present, presenting free summer concerts on the West Haven Green this month. 

The next, titled “Bailes” (dances), is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. next Wednesday, August 7 (all concerts are on the Green; the rain location is the West Haven Public Library at 300 Elm St.) . Musicians include Jennifer Quián-López on viola, Marika Basagoitia and Gregory Tompkins on violin, and Axel Rojas Vallejos on cello. 

“I feel like music should be a reflection of society, of community,” said Quián-López, who is Cuban and spent almost a decade in Puebla, Mexico, where her husband is from. “If we only bring music of certain composers to people, that would exclude” so many voices. “Music is a way of connecting with our society.”

That connection is how the quartet, all of the members of which identify as Hispanic or Latine, came to be. While the four had never performed together as an ensemble, all of them are affiliated with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra (NHSO), and particularly its Harmony Fellowship for Underrepresented Musicians. Quián-López and Basagoitia also know each other through the University of Hartford, where they pursued their graduate studies in music. 

So earlier this year, when Tompkins heard about a microgrant program for the arts in West Haven, something clicked. He thought about the Spanish-speaking students he’d taught while at Music Haven, many of whom had moved to West Haven. He thought about the four musicians, who all shared a desire to expand the canon. And he and fellow quartet members thought about bringing music outside, which is much more common in Latin America than it is in the U.S.

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Cris Zunun and Dio Oakley.

“In Cuba or Mexico, it’s very normal to go out and hear boleros or son” in parks and public spaces, Quián-López said. When the four scored the grant, three summer concerts seemed like the right place to start. The program is funded by American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars and administered by ArtsWestCT and the Arts Council of Greater New Haven. 

In the interest of full transparency, the Arts Paper is a program of, but editorially independent from, the Arts Council of Greater New Haven.   

As evening fell over the Green Tuesday, that communal approach came to life in real time. Kids ran through the square, sharing fresh berries and crackers with each other until bits of sweet, pink juice and crumbs dotted parts of the patio. Parents nestled into benches, sitting back as if they’d found a lower key concert hall.

Cristofer Zunun and Dio Oakley, both Music Haven alumni, made their way across the grass laughing, falling to a hush as they slipped into a bench and got ready to listen. Zunun, now an associate teacher at Cold Spring School, later joked that the two had come to check out the competition: both play in a Dabury-based group called the Legacy Quartet.  

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Liliana and Josiah mix and mingle with other families at the show.

They didn’t have long to wait. Announcing Luis Gustavo Prado’s “Danza Puertorriqueña,” commissioned for the Haven String Quartet as part of his 2020 Suite de Canto y Danza en Forma de Variaciones, members took up their instruments, speaking entirely in a language of slight nods, half-smiles, crinkled brows and quick, decisive movements. 

Between the four, they contained decades worth of experience, with a repertoire that ranged from Mexican composer Manuel Ponce and Cuban pianist Ignacio Cervantes to folk songs like “La Llorona,” based on centuries-old folk tales and traditions. In the audience, pint-sized listeners lingered somewhere between standing and dancing, adding a tiny scooter to the mix when the time seemed right. 

They were just getting started, Tompkins said after just a few opening works. Pivoting to Piazzolla’s tangos, the group began to travel between space and time beneath the Green’s open bandstand, taking just a beat between his “Oblivion” and 1959 “Adiós Nonino.” As they began, violin trilling above a hearty cello, Liliana chirped in time with the music, intrigued enough to want a closer look. She took Josiah by the hand and slowly made her way to the front.

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Back at a bench, their dad, Michael Cutler, beamed. When they’d headed over to the Green for an afternoon walk, he hadn’t known that there was going to be music. But when the sound of strings drifted over the grass, his kids were spellbound. The two remained at the front, entranced and half-dancing, until the final notes had drifted through the air and disappeared. 

“It’s very peaceful,” Cutler said. Back onstage, musicians traveled from Argentina to Mexico, closing thousands of miles with Prado’s nod to the Mexican Revolution (Prado himself straddles the diaspora: he is a Puerto Rican composer living in Spain). In the work, urgent, pulsating strings give way to a winding melody, one floating over the other in a way that makes it difficult not to move. 

And indeed, some of the youngest attendees did, gliding across the space as they transformed into tiny dancers, future folkloric performers in the making. One listener bent at the waist, and then gave a slow-motion twirl. Another sailed through the space on her scooter, then allowed other kids to share. By “La Llorona,” half a dozen small bodies filled the space, some shuffling close to the steps of the bandstand before inching back. 

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Anna Luther and her partner, Bob Boyle.

Flautist Anna Luther, a band teacher at Celentano Biotech, Health and Medical Magnet School, leaned back into her partner’s embrace and smiled, soaking it all in. A resident of West Haven, she later said that she was grateful for the infusion of accessible arts and culture into the city (ArtsWest CT President Elinor Slomba, whose advocacy of the arts helped secure the ARPA funding, later joked that it was “New Haven’s Brooklyn.”).

“I was like, ‘I can walk here,’” Luther said, grinning. “I’ve never walked to a string concert before. It’s so encouraging to see the growth of ArtsWestCT and it's so nice not to have to leave my own town for beautiful music.” 

Before ending with work by Alfredo Carrasco and Carlos Gardel, both Tompkins and Quián-López thanked attendees for coming, and invited them back for two upcoming concerts in the same space. Then they were off once more, as Gardel’s “"Por una Cabeza” bounced jauntily over the space. As it deepened into a sizzling, soulful tango, Liliana took note and began a spinning motion entirely of her own design. 

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As they kept out their instruments for a kind of stringed petting zoo, Vallejos added that the concerts bring a little bit of Latin America to West Haven. Growing up in Chile, he was used to hearing music in public parks, squares, plazas. It was part of the cultural tradition that made him fall in love with the cello at 10. 

He added that after years of performing in concert venues, often in a suit or formal wear, the West Haven appearances feel refreshing: he can let himself relax and feel the music in a different way. 

“This repertoire brings us closer to home,” he said. “I felt freedom.”

“We’re inviting people to be more interactive,” Basagoitia  added. “It breaks that barrier of formality.” 

Follow the Ritmo y Son String Quartet here. Their next concert, "Bailes," is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. on August 7 on the West Haven Green. The final performance is Tuesday, August 13, also at 5:30 p.m. In the case of rain, concerts will take place at the West Haven Public Library.