VC Artist Aizuri Quartet's New Album, "Earthdrawn Skies"

Released on Azica Records, the album features music by Hildegard von Bingen, Eleanor Alberga, Komitas Vardapet, and Jean Sibelius

VC Artist, the Aizuri Quartet, recently released a new album titled Earthdrawn Skies — which presents four less-known pieces.

The works on the disc, by Hildegard von Bingen, Eleanor Alberga, Komitas Vardapet, and Jean Sibelius are disparate in style and period, but strongly connected by their themes. Each work explores concepts of home, nationhood, and tradition, while also looking to the heavens, considering ideas of transcendence and the sublime.

You can find the album, here.

Earthdrawn Skies will be the last disc in the quartet's current formation, following the announcement of personnel changes. The group is presently comprised of violinists Emma Frucht and Miho Saegusa, violist Ayane Kozasa, and cellist Karen Ouzounian. Both Kozasa and Ouzounian are departing in order to focus on their solo careers, with Kozasa having been awarded a full professorship at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

"Each work is rooted in a sense of tradition and connection to the land, even as the composers seek something beyond their reach: an understanding of God, the physics of the cosmos, homeland, happiness," said cellist Karen Ouzounian of the repertoire on the disc.

"The four of us have often talked about ‘singing through our instruments’ and how the quartet is one organism," said violinist Miho Saegusa. "[Alex Fortes's arrangement of Hildegard's Columba aspexit] presented us with a unique and challenging question, one we were excited to explore: how can we truly become one voice?"

"The music of Komitas gave us a sense of our roots, our homes and lands from which we were displaced, the contours and nuances of our language, the warmth and sorrow and ebullience of our families, a link between those who perished and those who are living," added Ouzounian of the album's link to her Armenian heritage.

"Playing the music of Komitas with the Aizuri Quartet and sharing it with you gives voice to the unheard, and I hope it conveys the heart, the hope, and the love of my Armenian family."