Sound Off x The City Reliquary: Dorothy Rudd Moore & More

Felix Mendelssohn - String Quartet No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 44 No. 2
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Dorothy Rudd Moore - Modes (livestream premiere!)
William Grant Still - Lyric Quartette

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Fiercely committed to the music of our time, violinist and composer Giancarlo Latta is interested in the intersection and convergence of music old and new, a passion he explores principally as a member of the acclaimed New York-based Argus Quartet. He has worked with dozens of composers including Mario Davidovsky, George Lewis, Aaron Jay Kernis, and Anna Thorvaldsdottir, and has been heard in venues as diverse as the Rothko Chapel (Houston), Royal Albert Hall (London) as part of the BBC Proms, and Neubad (Lucerne, Switzerland), a multipurpose performance space in a former public swimming pool. Recent highlights include duo performances with flutist Claire Chase, the U.S. premiere of Liza Lim’s opera "Tree of Codes" at the Spoleto Festival USA, and residencies at Yellow Barn and Avaloch Farm. Giancarlo studied with Paul Kantor and Almita Vamos. He is also a writer.

Violinist Njioma Grevious of Washington, DC, is an avid chamber and orchestral musician and a student of Ronald Copes at Juilliard. Recently, she won a Keston-Max Fellowship to study and perform with the London Symphony Orchestra. In 2018, she won First Prizes for Performance and Interpretation in the Prix Ravel chamber music competition in France, and participated in a masterclass with the Caildore String Quartet at Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center with the Abeo Quartet. In 2019, along with her quartet colleagues, she won a Silver Medal in the Fischoff International Chamber Music Competition, and appeared on WQXR Midday Masterpieces and WETA Classical Radio as well as in performances at Alice Tully Hall, The Kennedy Center, in Montreal, and Oslo, Norway. Njioma has been invited to participate in numerous summer festivals including the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Music Academy of the West, Montreal International String Quartet Academy, Meadowmount, Fontainebleau Schools and the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. She has been a member of the Montclair Orchestra, a concertmaster with the Juilliard Wind Orchestra, and has performed on tour in Germany, the Czech Republic, The Netherlands, Spain, Argentina and more as a member of the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. For many years Njioma was a scholarship recipient through Boston’s Project STEP string training program for youth. During that time she enjoyed the special privilege of performing in a quartet for President and Mrs. Obama at a White House State Dinner. Throughout her life, Njioma has regularly shared her love of music as a frequent performer in nursing homes and assisted living residences. She continues her outreach as a Juilliard Gluck fellow.

Originally from Uniondale, New York, first-generation Filipino-American Jay Julio is a multi-instrumentalist, teacher, and composer-arranger currently based in Harlem. They look forward to a change of scenery soon, beginning a new chapter as one-fourth of the 2020-2023 LA Orchestra Fellowship. They have recorded on United Common Records, Captured Tracks, Fiendish Endeavor, and Broadway Records, and most recently appeared in the official collaborative music video for Major Lazer & Marcus Mumford’s single, Lay Your Head On Me, released as a fundraiser for COVID-19 research efforts. Jay has received fellowships to attend the Music Academy of the West, Orpheus@Mannes, and the Aspen, Manchester, and Lake Tahoe music festivals; they have also spent summers at the Yellow Barn Young Artists Program, the National Symphony Orchestra’s Summer Music Institute as a Young Artist of Color, and have been invited to the Spoleto and Pacific Music Festival. After taking their first viola lesson at age 14 at the Mannes Preparatory Division, Jay graduated from the Interlochen Arts Academy at 16 studying with Renee Skerik with their highest musical honor, the Young Artist Award, received their BM in Viola Performance from the Manhattan School of Music under Karen Ritscher on full scholarship, and received their MM at the Juilliard School on a full-tuition Susan W. Rose Fellowship under the tutelage of Heidi Castleman, Misha Amory, and Matthew Lipman. Through the LA Orchestra Fellowship, they are receiving a GC (Graduate Certificate) at the University of Southern California as a student of Yura Lee. Other important mentors include Anne Lanzilotti and Lina Bahn. For rhythm, Jay studies poetry.

Thapelo Masita uses his music to help further the arts in his home country of South Africa. He earned a Bachelor of Music in cello performance from the Eastman School of Music in 2017 and a Master of Music degree from the Juilliard School in 2019. Through a faculty position at the Opportunity Music Project and a fellowship in the Music Advancement Program - a Juilliard Sponsored Community Engagement Initiative, Masita has been able to serve young people from underrepresented communities. Masita is a founding member of the Uhuru String Quartet, which seeks through artistic collaborations and performance to connect and empower women who have experienced domestic violence and homelessness. The Quartet has commissioned and performed a new quartet by Japanese-American composer Sato Matsui, and has collaborated on several occasions with Pulitzer Prize winning composer Caroline Shaw. Masita is the founder and executive director of the Bokamoso International Chamber Music Festival and Workshop in South Africa, which aims to share the joys of music with local communities while providing high level training to promising youths from around the country. Thapelo is pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts Degree at CUNY Graduate Center where he works with Julia Lichten. He performs on a cello made by Oded Kishony, on generous loan to him by the Virtu Foundation.

Kyle Carrero Lopez is a Black poet of Cuban-American heritage. He lives in Brooklyn, reads poetry submissions for Homology Lit, and is a founding member of the Black queer production collective LEGACY. His newest poems are published in Frontier Poetry, The Nation, POETRY, & The Breakbeat Poets Volume IV: LatiNEXT (Haymarket Books, 2020). He received an MFA in Poetry from NYU, where he was a Goldwater Fellow.