James Weeks: weatherworld quartets

This cycle of six quartets each around ten minutes long, explores our sensory and bodily experience of the outdoors - the ‘weatherworld’. Their sonic landscape is pervaded by rain and wind, sounding out the surfaces and bodies of the instruments in a delicately mesmeric weave of harmonics, open strings and unpitched noise; sustained, glanced, brushed, tapped. In two quartets the bow is replaced by plant materials – fern fronds and cypress sprigs – heightening the exploration of an intimate, immersed way of being in the natural world that speaks urgently to our need for ecological reconnection.

Quatuor Bozzini

Clemens Merkel, Alissa Cheung, violins

Stéphanie Bozzini, viola

Isabelle Bozzini, cello

James Weeks: weatherworld quartets 1-6 (2022-25, world premiere)