This concert by the Mivos Quartet—one of the leading ensembles of its genre on the international new-music scene—presented recent works by four composers who transcend cultural identity through their personal continual journeys, all having lived on both sides of the Atlantic and retracing the West-Eastern Divan beyond their own descent. Saad Haddad and Carl Bettendorf both employ maqāmāt—the traditional scales/modes and characteristic melodic phrases of Middle Eastern music—in their respective second attempts at the string quartet genre, while the middle section of Eren Gümrükçüoğlu’s piece depicts an imaginary journey from East to West through localities of texture. In her personal trajectory from Israel to Paris and Montpellier via the United States, composer Sivan Eldar expands the West-Eastern Divan from the coasts of the Mediterranean across the Atlantic.

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Photos: Gili Benita