Events

The Sycamore String Quartet has delivered top quality live concerts to audiences throughout BC’s southwest interior since 2009. Violinist Cvetozar Vutev and cellist Martin Krátký originally formed the group to provide a jumpstart to what became a very successful chamber music component of the Kamloops Symphony Orchestra season and with the addition of violist Ashley Kroecher and violinist Sandra Wilmot, the Sycamore String Quartet has become a focal point of the Thompson-Okanagan live classical music scene. Whether bringing Haydn and Shostakovich to Princeton, Ashcroft, Revelstoke, and Oliver, or introducing larger audiences in Vernon and Kelowna to groundbreaking Canadian and international composers (e.g. Cam Wilson, Alan Gilliland, Dinuk Wijeratne, and Erkki-Sven Tüür), the group is known for its integrity of programming combined with a level of artistic excellence rarely heard outside of larger urban centres. Recent highlights include giving the world premiere performance of Imant Raminsh’s Clarinet Quintet in celebration of the composer’s 80th birthday in 2023.

Centering around the String Quartet No. 1 by British Columbia composer Imant Raminsh, this program will explore the depths of the human experience through music. Selections from J.S. Bach’s monumental Art of Fugue will open the program, highlighting the composer’s contrapuntal genius in what became his very last work written before his death in 1750. The String Quartet No. 1  by Imant Raminsh, based on a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, will take the audience on a journey of introspective contemplation to outward exuberance. The program will be framed and punctuated by a couple other surprise gems from the string quartet repertoire.