Sunday, Sept. 1 at 4 p.m.—ROCHESTER— The Rochester Chamber Music Society will close its 30th summer season in Rochester on Sunday, Sept. 1 at 4 p.m. in the Federated Church in Rochester. Artistic Director Adda Kridler will present a concert of exciting new music with The Overlook Quartet. The program includes works by contemporary composers Pauline Oliveros, Leila Adu, Shelley Washington, Trevor Weston, Shanan Estreicher, and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson.
The string quartet The Overlook is a unifying, community-building force, whose dedication to a more representative musical tradition reverberates throughout their industry.
The Overlook formed from a simple need to make and share music with others during the pandemic shutdown. The longtime friends, some of New York’s most accomplished string players, gathered to play outdoors in parks and on street corners in upper Manhattan, and their community stopped to listen. Through these casual outdoor performances, they built a following in person and on social media, connected with local businesses and residential enclaves, and partnered with important neighborhood cultural centers for their first official performances. They witnessed firsthand the power of music to unite and inspire—all without playing a single note of the string quartet repertoire that has been held up as “standard” for hundreds of years.
Since their inception in June 2020, The Overlook has worked to effect permanent change in the “classical music canon” by developing a body of repertoire composed by BIPOC, female, and non-binary creators. The quartet has presented masterworks from the past by Florence Price, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and Chevalier de Saint-Georges, as well as works by living composers Trevor Weston, Eleanor Alberga, Carlos Simon, Jessie Montgomery, Shelley Washington, Leila Adu, Forbes Graham, and many more. The Overlook has enjoyed collaborating with such artists as New York Philharmonic principal clarinetist Anthony McGill, Wilco guitarist Nels Cline, multi-Grammy nominee Curtis Stewart, and noted visual artist Linda Sormin. To support their work, the quartet has been awarded grants by the Eastman School of Music, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Bronx Council on the Arts and Local 802’s Music Performance Trust Fund.
The Overlook has developed and presented a new performance series “If the Stars Align” in Uptown-NYC, with concerts at Washington Heights/Inwood cultural institutions including Hispanic Society of America, Morris-Jumel Mansion, Dyckman Farmhouse Museum, Fort Washington Collegiate Church, and United Palace Theatre. The quartet recently brought their mission to Lincoln Center at Kaufman Music Center’s “Musical Storefronts,” Chamber Music NY at Bruno Walter Auditorium, GatherNYC at the Museum of Arts and Design, Symphony Space, Fotografiska New York, and Wave Hill. Further afield, the quartet has performed at Chatter ABQ, WOCO Fest, The Arts Club of DC, Music for Montauk, Mass MoCA, Lehigh University, Tuckamore Festival in NL, Canada, as well as in a virtual performance presented by the Metropolitan Museum of Art that has been streamed nearly 70,000 times.
By building relationships with composers and championing new works, collaborating with interdisciplinary creators, re-thinking the concert experience to include non-traditional spaces, and consistently engaging with their Uptown NYC community, The Overlook upholds its mission to create a more representative and relevant musical practice.
Described as “lyrical and precise” by the New York Times and lauded in the Miami Herald for her “incisive energy and lovely tone,” violinist and violist Adda Kridler has cultivated a diverse career in New York City. As a vital member of the contemporary and avant-garde music scene, Kridler has worked with over 100 living composers and premiered more than 60 works, including Georg Friedrich Haas, Talea Leon. She appears frequently with the Talea Ensemble, is on faculty of the Composers Conference, and is a former member of the Momenta and Overlook Quartets. With the avant-metal string quartet Seven)Suns, she has performed at the Walla Walla Chamber Music Festival as well as on the Dillinger Escape Plan’s 20th anniversary shows in New York.
As a chamber and orchestral player, she has played and toured with the Argus Quartet, performed in Cuba with the Third Sound Ensemble, and appeared with many of New York’s finest ensembles including the Mark Morris Dance Group, The Knights, New York City Ballet, and the New Jersey Symphony.
Kridler frequently records and performs for film, television and recording artists; she has toured nationally with Adele, played on “The Tonight Show” and “Saturday Night Live,” recorded film scores for Ryuichi Sakamoto, and appeared on-screen in Succession and Maestro. She is a member of the Vitamin String Quartet collective, and has played in many broadway productions and cast albums, including Hamilton, Moulin Rouge, Beetlejuice, and The Great Gatsby.
She graduated cum laude from Harvard University studying cognitive neuroscience, and completed her musical studies at the New England Conservatory. Kridler is thrilled to join RCMS as artistic director in the 2025 season, and even more thrilled to have found her second musical family in the wonderful Rochester community.
Admission is by donation.
For more info, visit: rcmsvt.org or call 802-767-9234.
