Sirius Quartet with Richie Bierach

Sirius has played some of the most important venues in the world, including Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, the Beijing Music Festival, the Cologne Music Triennale, Stuttgart Jazz, Musique Actuelle in Canada, the Taichung Jazz Fest (Taiwan), and many others.

In 2019, the group released New World, a politically charged and topical work that explores themes of immigration, discrimination, and being an agent of change. The previously released title track was the Grand Prize winner for the New York Philharmonic’s “New World Initiative” composition competition in 2017. Composer/violinist Gregor Huebner balances idyllic and hopeful themes from Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 (the “New World” Symphony) with fiercer passages found in the Shostakovich String Quartet No. 8, which alludes to tensions between the composer and the Soviet Union. “With two immigrant violinists, we in the quartet feel that it’s important to create music that speaks to the moment in which we live and gives hope,” says Huebner.

Other pieces on the album include Huebner’s “#STILL,” based on the devastating song “Strange Fruit,” first recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939. Composer/violinist Fung Chern Hwei describes his contribution, “Beside the Point,” as his “declaration of struggle against discrimination.” Cellist/composer Jeremy Harman’s “Currents” maintains a vague sense of menace throughout, prodding the listener out of any complacency. The Beatles’ iconic “Eleanor Rigby” and Radiohead’s “Knives Out,” both arranged by Huebner, showcase the group’s fierce improvisational acumen. The album is both an impassioned lament for the state of a nation and the world, and a beautiful and hopeful call to action.