Winners of the University of Michigan's 2018 M Prize Competition, the Aizuri quartet's UMS debut program features an interesting mix of composers, including Komitas Vartabed (1869-1935), an exquisitely talented Armenian composer whose music has become an enduring symbol of home and identity for a people separated from their homeland (he spent the last 20 years of his life in an asylum, driven mad by the conditions of the Armenian genocide); Béla Bartók’s second string quartet, a journey of emotional extremes that is based on folk music from his homeland; and two works written specifically for the Aizuri Quartet, Caroline Shaw’s Blueprint, inspired by the same woodblock printing that inspired the Aizuri’s name, and Paul Wiancko’s LIFT.
