 DICKSON QUARTET |
When the piano-playing siblings the Five Browns began packing concert halls for their performances of popular classics, their story—a truly musical family—was just as responsible for their early acclaim as their undeniable talent.
Now, Portland is cultivating its own family ensemble of musical prodigies with a similar combination of talent and narrative allure. For six years, the Dickson String Quartet, comprising the older siblings of Dickson family—including Benjamin (viola, 19), Brandon (violin, 19), Ashley (violin, 18) and Daniel (cello, 15), all home schooled in Battleground, Wash.—has played at everything from the Rose Festival Royal Rosarians queen luncheon to musical programs for cancer patients.
Portland composer Jack Gabel heard the group tackle Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8 at an Oregon Pro Arte concert last year and marveled at “the sheer audacity of such young musicians tackling so monumental a work.” Shostakovich wrote the quartet, one of the 20th century’s most powerful chamber works, after witnessing the aftermath of the horrific, unconscionable firebombing of Dresden during World War II, and dedicated it to the victims of fascism.
Gabel told his wife, choreographer Agnieszka Laska, about the group, and after hearing them play the Quartet in recital, she decided to create a new dance—“The Terror That Is Named the Flight of Time”—set to their passionate rendition.
Laska’s company will also dance her new choreography to three of Tomas Svoboda’s “Etudes in Fugue Style,” with pianist Christopher Schindler, along with other pieces (see dance listing, this page).
But the centerpieces will be the Dickson family and Shostakovich’s searing masterpiece. Pro Arte director Cindy Petty says despite their youth, the ensemble is up to the challenge: “They are an aural painting and play with an intensity that will draw you into the heart of the music and leave you breathless.”
SEE IT: Imago Theater, 17 SE 8th Ave., 715-1866. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, June 19-21. Recorded music only Saturday. $15-$18.
It's almost mind boggling to imagine what it must be like to have pushed yourself artistically to succeed in building an audience of artistic followers who "get your sly satire and witty commentary" only to find yourself scrambling to attract enough dedicated patrons locally to fill the house, let alone pay the bills.
Together with composer Jack Gabel, this amazing pair of artists have mounted some of the most interesting contemporary dance work I've seen anywhere. Whether is was their searing commentary on torture (The Fall '01), their latest provocative pieces (The Terror that is named the Flight of Time) or works from their extensive repertory that lovingly poke fun at the world of classical dance, Agnieszka Laska and Jack Gabel deserve the support not only of our local community but a much greater and ongoing slice of the funding pie for their continued efforts.
What has been built in roughly the past few years is a dance company admired now the world over (and especially in Eastern Europe) for its energy, it's level of artistry, it's originality, it's music and choreography and it's amazing power of survival with a minimum of government support--now admired and envied for its freedom of dissent, up to now unhampered. We draw closer, the artists of Eastern European and ours, as the tyranny of the box office becomes known to them in their shifting economies and the tyranny of censorship, which they have lifted, threatens to become known to us.
Agnieszka Laska and Jack Gabel are in fact leading an artistic revolution. The originating thought at the base of the revolution is that the performing arts should stop serving the function of making money, for which it has never been suited, and start serving the revelation and shaping of the process of living, for which it is uniquely suited--for which it exists!
This radical-though simple thought is that the arts should be reclaimed from commerce and restored to itself as a form of art: an ancient and ever changing art form, where life in all its complexity happens before our eyes.
Llewellyn J. Rhoe
Producing Director
Arts Equity
And, let's support integrity in the arts!
Marion Warfield
Environmental Education
Cascadia Wild!
I was happy to read about them in the paper and have a better awareness of the musical group the Five Browns, that performed with them. I will continue to support them and hope that others will also come forward so we can keep them here in Portland along with the beautiful art they bring us.