The Julia Perry Centenary Celebration and Festival Opening Night, presented by Experiential Orchestra and Videmus, features the multi-GRAMMY-nominated PUBLIQuartet, applauded by The Washington Post as “a perfect encapsulation of today’s trends in chamber music;” soprano Laquita Mitchell, praised in The New York Times for her “smooth-voiced and soothing presence;” and pianist and musicologist Samantha Ege, known for her "vivid, revelatory" performances (iNews). PUBLIQuartet will bring a creative re-imagining to the music of Julia Perry, performing world premieres of rediscovered works by Perry in arrangements by members of the quartet Jannina Norpoth, Hamilton Berry and Curtis Stewart, including Perry’s Prelude for Piano and Miniature for Piano and Stewart’s We Who Seek, which draws on Perry’s choral work Ye, Who Seek the Truth in a new version for quartet, electronics, and spoken word to be performed by Stewart. Soprano Laquita Mitchell will perform two rediscovered songs by Perry, How Beautiful are the Feet and By the Sea. Samantha Ege performs Perry’s Miniature for Piano and Prelude for Piano. The evening also celebrates the release of Experiential Orchestra’s album American Counterpoints, which features contributions from all of the PUBLIQuartet members.

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Artists:

PUBLIQuartet: Curtis Stewart & Rubén Rengel, Violins; Nick Revel, Viola; Hamilton Berry, Cello

Curtis Stewart, Violin

Laquita Mitchell, Soprano

Samantha Ege, Piano

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Program:

Prelude for Piano by Julia Perry (1946, rev. 1962; arr. for string quartet by Berry, world premiere of arrangement)
‍_{Arrangement by Hamilton Berry of the Julia Perry Prelude for Piano (1946) by kind permission of The Estate of Julia A. Perry.}

PUBLIQuartet
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Ye, Who Seek the Truth by Julia Perry (1952; arr. for string quartet by Norpoth)
PUBLIQuartet

Miniature for Piano by Julia Perry (1972) 
Samantha Ege, Piano

Miniature for Piano by Julia Perry (1972; arr. for string quartet by Berry, world premiere of arrangement)
PUBLIQuartet

By the Sea by Julia Perry (1950) How Beautiful are the Feet by Julia Perry (1954) 
Laquita Mitchell, Soprano
Samantha Ege, Piano

We Who Seek by Curtis Stewart (2024, world premiere of quartet version w/ electronics)
Curtis Stewart, Violin & Spoken Word and PUBLIQuartet

Prelude for Piano by Julia Perry (1946, rev. 1962)
Samantha Ege, Piano

With kind cooperation of The Estate of Julia A. Perry, Akron, Ohio