andPlay @ Kent State’s Vanguard New Music Series
November 19, 2019 by Mike Telin
When the duo andPlay — Maya Bennardo, violin, and Hannah Levinson, viola — were in Cleveland to perform on the Re:Sound Festival last summer, ClevelandClassical.com critic Jarrett Hoffman wrote that “Bennardo and Levinson played with obvious chemistry, genuinely at ease with one another in the kind of way that just makes an audience feel good.”
On Thursday, November 21, andPlay will return to Northeast Ohio for a performance on the Kent State Vanguard New Music Series. The 7:30 pm concert in Ludwig Recital Hall will include Leah Asher’s Letters to My Future Self (2018), Clara Iannotta’s Limun (2011), Anthony Vine’s Terrain (2019), Scott Wollschleger’s Violain (2017), and the premiere of a new work by Adam Roberts. The event is free.
I caught up with the duo by telephone and began our conversation by asking how their invitation to Kent came about.
Hannah Levinson: Adam Roberts teaches at Kent. We played a piece of his a few years ago, so that’s how we met him, and since then we’ve become friends. When he went to Kent he wanted to bring us there, so we commissioned this new piece from him. He introduced us to Noa Even, who runs the Re:Sound Festival. But it was a coincidence that we ended up going to the Festival, and it was very funny when we realized that it was the same Noa.
Mike Telin: Please say a few words about the piece.
Maya Bennardo: It’s a two-movement piece, and we previewed one the movements back in October.
HL: It was nice that we played something of his before because he was able to incorporate what he knows about us as players and people into the piece. It feels like all the motifs are being stretched. They are repeated and become more intricate, and the patterns are expanded in different ways. It creates a large and thick texture.
MB: There are interweaving patterns — like taking a fabric and pulling it so you can see through it a little bit.
HL: With our commissions, it’s about finding people who will write something that sounds like more than just two string instruments, and Adam’s piece does that. It creates a multi-layered, complex, and powerful work.
MT: Congratulations on your new album playlist on New Focus Recordings. Will you be performing any works from that recording?