February 26, 2002
Contact: Susan Gwynne
(805) 893-2098
e-mail: gwynne-s@sa.ucsb.edu

All the World for Love, an interweaving of poetry and music, presented by the Takács Quartet and Robert Pinsky at UCSB Campbell Hall

Summary Facts:

• Takács Quartet and Robert Pinsky
• A unique collaboration of music and poetry, All the World for Love
• The Grammy Award-nominated Takács Quartet is one of the world’s finest string quartets
• Robert Pinsky is the former U.S. Poet Laureate
• Sunday, April 7 / 4 pm
• UCSB Campbell Hall
• General: $30/$25, UCSB students: $19/$16
• Tickets/information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at 893-3535

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky joins the esteemed Takács Quartet for an enchanting afternoon of music and poetry centered on the themes of love on Sunday, April 7 at 4 pm in UCSB Campbell Hall. All the World for Love, a program of both classic and contemporary poetry as well as music, explores love in all its colors and permutations. Throughout the performance, Pinsky will read ten varied love poems by John Donne, William Carlos Williams, Emily Dickinson, Louise Glück, William Butler Yeats and others. The Takács Quartet will perform Leos Janácek’s Quartet No. 2 Intimate Letters, based on the composer’s intense love for a young woman, Samuel Barber’s stirring Adagio from String Quartet, Op. 11 and Benjamin Britten’s String Quartet No. 3, Op. 94, based on Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice.

This unique collaboration sprang from an inspiration by Edward Dusinberre, first violinist with Takács. He has been quoted as saying, “Having heard poems aloud, it struck me that the reader has to make a lot of the same choices as a musicians about phrasing, dynamics, rhythm and character. I was curious what it would be like for audiences to experience music and poems one after the other and to think about the way they listen.” Mutual friends brought the Quartet and Robert Pinsky together. Pinsky, a long-time advocate of hearing poems and not just reading them, has been quoted as saying, “The medium for a poem is not words, not lines. It is the reader’s body, a column of breath shaking the reader’s organs. Your breath becomes the poet’s medium. Poetry is a vocal art.” Because of their conviction about the connection between the spoken word and music, the quartet and Pinsky developed a program centered on themes of love, for love provides a unity to the performance while allowing for a range of emotions.

The Takács Quartet is comprised of Edward Dusinberre and Károly Schranz on violin, Roger Tapping on viola and András Fejér on cello. Since its formation in 1975 the ensemble has appeared in every major musical capital and festival. It has performed Bartok cycles in London, Madrid and Seville; Schubert cycles in London, Lisbon and Utrecht; and Beethoven cycles in Paris, Zurich, New York City and Sydney. Takács is Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Colorado in Boulder and Fellow of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. The Quartet’s wide-ranging discography includes the Schubert “Trout” Quintet with Adreas Haefliger, piano, a 2000 Grammy Award nominee, and Dvorak’s Quartet Op. 51 and his Piano Quintet Op. 81, also with Mr. Haefliger. The group is currently recording the entire Beethoven quartet cycle for Decca, with which it has an exclusive recording relationship. The Detroit News claims, “The Takács Quartet belongs to the first rank of chamber ensembles in the world today. Here are four virtuoso musicians who play with an integrity that expresses discipline as conditioned ease.”

Jay Parini, writing in the Chicago Review, states, “Robert Pinsky writes with a deeply humane sensibility, drawing new water from old wells, but also reaching into areas where nobody would have guessed that poetry could be found...An example of what is best in our current poetry.” Pinsky, Poet Laureate of the United States from 1997-2000, is currently poetry editor of the online journal Slate and a contributor to PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. As Poet Laureate Pinsky spearheaded the Favorite Poem Project, which began with audio recordings of Americans saying their favorite poems and led to video documentaries, a large Library of Congress database, a web site and the publication of collections by Norton Books. Pinsky teaches in the graduate writing program at Boston University. He received a Pulitzer Prize nomination for The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1965-1995 and his translation of Dante’s The Inferno won the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry.

Members of the Takács Quartet and Robert Pinsky will conduct a Meet-the-Artists Discussion at 3 pm before the performance. Courtesy of the UCSB Bookstore, books by Robert Pinsky will be available for purchase and signing at the event.

The Santa Barbara Bowl Foundation’s SAGE (School Arts Gifts in Education) Program has generously provided funds for Robert Pinsky to meet with students at Santa Barbara High School during his residency.

This performance of All the World for Love is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures and sponsored by KDB Classical Radio. This residency is funded in part by the California Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Tickets are $30 and $25 for the general public and $19 and $16 for UCSB students.

For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
Susan Gwynne at (805) 893-2098.