Spokane String Quartet opens season with Beethoven, Dvořák and Chickasaw Nation’s Jerod Tate

The first performance by the Spokane String Quartet of the 2024-25 season is this Sunday and features pieces from an array of composers.

Violinist Amanda Howard-Phillips and the rest of the quartet have been preparing for the show for about a month and a half. It will feature three pieces, each from a different composer.

The list includes String Quartet No. 16 in F Major, Op. 135 by a composer who needs little introduction, Ludwig van Beethoven.

Often dubbed as one of, if not the greatest, classical composers of all time, his powerful works induce great emotion, and his quartets are some of the most popular in Western music for this reason. Howard-Phillips believes the piece they have selected is no different, and this is especially true because it was one of the last pieces he had ever written while not only in waning health but also while deaf.

“He was struggling with the duality of feeling so devastated by his hearing loss but also feeling like there was more for him to create,” Howard-Phillips said. “He had this huge drive to create, and that persevered through the devastation of his hearing loss. It’s really just so incredible that he was completely writing this music never having heard it, never having heard a single note.”

They will also be exploring “Pisachi (Reveal)” by Jerod Tate, a living composer and citizen of the Chickasaw Nation who has been rising in classical environment. His music is inspired by and expresses his American Indian identity, and Howard-Phillips has a special connection to him.

In 2017, she got in touch with Tate online and asked if he had any string quartets – which he didn’t at the time. But, he had been teaching a summer composition program at the Chickasaw Arts Academy in Oklahoma and told Howard-Phillips that many of his teenage students had written impressive quartet pieces.

Later that year, Howard-Phillips and the Spokane String Quartet performed four of those student compositions alongside visual arts created by a few of Tate’s fellow Chickasaw acquaintances.

The quartet also submitted their recordings of the pieces to the long-running classical music radio program “Performance Today,” which has since nationally played their versions six times.

“Jerod Tate is such a kind and generous guy,” Howard-Phillips said. “I really admire him and what he’s doing for classical music and his community and the music world in general.”

The final piece the quartet will be playing is Antonín Dvořák’s String Quartet in D Major, Op. 34.

A Czech composer who spent considerable time in the United States (primarily Iowa), Dvořák was heavily influenced by folk music of Eastern Europe as well as that of the American landscape while in the country. His music is known for being very melodic and featuring little hints of things he enjoyed, such as sounds similar to that of birds and trains.

The quartet will be playing Dvořák’s Ninth Quartet, which was dedicated to Johannes Brahms, a fellow composer who referred a relatively unknown Dvořák to his own publisher and helped jump-start his career.

“It’s a lot of fun,” Howard-Phillips said. “I think the audience will really enjoy it.”

The Spokane String Quartet (all members of the Spokane Symphony) will start their season by performing this diverse collection of pieces on Sunday at the Fox Theater. Mateusz Wolski is on first violin, Howard-Phillips is on second, Jeannette Wee-Yang is on viola and Helen Byrne is on cello.

“I think people should give listening to string quartets a shot because it’s so visceral, it’s so intimate, and it can really invite the listener in a way that I think even symphonic music sometimes can’t,” Howard-Phillips said.

Tickets can be found at foxtheaterspokane.org.