CQ 2024: Closing Night Celebration

ChamberQUEER is thrilled to present Constellation, our 2024 Pride Month celebration of queer community, diversity, and excellence in chamber music! Featuring multiple live performances and workshops every day, ChamberQUEER 2024: Constellation runs Tuesday, June 11 through Sunday, June 16 at MITU580.

EVENT DETAILS

We’re closing out Constellation with a bang! First, Ringdown (Caroline Shaw and Danni Lee) will play a set of their irresistible “electronic cinematic pop”; then, after a celebratory champagne toast, Thalea String Quartet will perform CQ co-founder Andrew Yee’s new String Quartet, premiered by Thalea earlier this year. Yee will then take the stage to perform and facilitate an evening of her music; expect special guests, lots of cross-pollination, and a heck of a good time.

Ringdown's music is like calling your first love on a rotary telephone, percussively tearing out the hammers from a 1924 vintage upright, and flinging each of them into space while you wait for every heartache you've ever felt to quietly return. Collaborators Caroline Shaw and Danni Lee—who between the two of them have a Pulitzer Prize, a handful of Grammys, and a "Best Drum Major" Award—describe Ringdown as an electronic cinematic pop duo from Portland, Oregon. Others have described Ringdown as the love child of Johannes Brahms and Brandi Carlile—if they were born in the same century and if Brahms was a queer woman. You decide.

GRAMMY Award-winning cellist & composer Andrew Yee has been praised by Michael Kennedy of the London Telegraph as “spellbindingly virtuosic”. Trained at the Juilliard School, they are a founding member of the internationally acclaimed Attacca Quartet who have released several albums to critical acclaim. They like to make stop-motion videos of food, draw apples, cook like an Italian Grandma and have developed coffee and cocktail programs for award-winning restaurants (Lilia, Risbobk, Atla) in New York City. They play on an 1884 Eugenio Degani cello on loan from the Five Partners Foundation.

The Thalea String Quartet brings their signature vibrancy and emotional commitment to dynamic performances that reflect the past, present, and the future of the string quartet repertoire while celebrating diverse musical traditions from around the world. Fueled by the belief that chamber music is a powerful force for building community and human connection, the Thalea String Quartet has performed across North America, Europe, and China, and has appeared at the Kennedy Center, Massey Hall, and Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall. Committed to shaping and contributing to the future of the string quartet repertoire, the Thalea String Quartet has premiered dozens of new works and has collaborated on new commissions with composers including Osvaldo Golijov, Paola Prestini, Anthony R. Green, Akshaya Avril Tucker, and Tanner Porter.