The Amernet String Quartet was in concert on Tuesday, September 9, 2025 at Marc A. Scorca Hall at The National Opera Center in Manhattan, performing Judith Zaimont's Structures – String Quartet No. 3.
The program was repeated on September 10 at Queens Botanical Garden in Flushing, and on Thursday, September 11 at Port Washington Public Library in Port Washington on Long Island. These concerts were presented in cooperation with The Steven Gerber Trust.
The composer writes:
Structures – String Quartet No. 3
1. Essay – The Plain of Jars (Laos)
2. Quiet Time – The Lotus Temple (Delhi)
3. Frolic - Skewed Spirals (Sculptures by Anton Bakker)
Though inspiration for much of my earlier music stems from contemplating the wonders of the natural world, it is human imagination and human endeavor that underly the three string quartets. Each of the three movements in Structures – String Quartet No. 3 is inspired by quite particular human-made structures – each having its own marked physical character plus a precise emotional atmosphere.
The Plain of Jars is a 400-mile tree-dotted plain featuring clusters of tall mortuary jars put in place over many, many years. The jars are c. five feet tall and made of stones quarried at sites many miles away. The Plain radiates strength, a piercing sorrow, commitment over time, and cluster formation rather than flow. The music responds to those cues: Its outer segments are frontal, strong and interruptive, uncompromised; its mid-section a quiet, ‘breathing’ sustained moment. The four strings move much of the time in rhythmic lock-step and the movement ends in shrieks.
Quiet Time is just that. Imagine being inside a structure – a Temple - dedicated to quiet contemplation, beauty, and inner peace. A one-line solo melody arises from silence, is ‘sung’ over a shifting backdrop of ‘whispered’, carved, ever-changing figurations that materialize over time. Some turmoil surfaces occasionally, but the music returns always to its long-breathed contemplative mode before evaporating into silence.
Frolic responds to the visual profiles and very nature of Anton Baker’s many spiral sculptures – athletic pointed, off-kilter formations. Musically the mood is scherzo-like – playful, a touch intense, and never expected --- always dancing forward.
Judith Lang Zaimont is internationally recognized for her music's distinctive style, characterized by emotion, expressive strength and dynamism. Her creation of inventive and widely varied colors and textures is repeatedly cited, whether in orchestral, or choral works and chamber music. A 2003 Aaron Copland Award winner, the 2016 The American Prize in Chamber Music Composition, and a 2017 American Prize in Orchestral Composition, she has enjoyed a distinguished career as composer of over 120 works with performances by the Philadelphia Orchestra, Janacek Philharmonic, Baltimore Symphony, Berlin and Czech Radio symphonies, Camerata Bern and the Kremlin Chamber Orchestra. Her music is widely performed throughout the U.S. and Europe and has been recorded for Sorel Classics, MSR Classics, Naxos, Navona, Harmonia Mundi, Arabesque, Milken Family Foundation, Albany, Jeanné, Leonarda, Northeastern, and 4Tay labels. Her principal publishers are Subito Music, Galaxy/ ECS, Jeanné, Lauren Keiser Music Publishing and Vivace. She is creator and editor-in-chief of the critically acclaimed book series The Musical Woman: An International Perspective. More information about Ms. Zaimont, including sound clips of many of her compositions, is available at http://www.judithzaimont.com.
For inquiries about her music, please contact Jeffrey James Arts Consulting at 516-586-3433 or [email protected].
Praised for their "intelligence" and “immensely satisfying” playing by the New York Times, the Amernet String Quartet has garnered recognition as one of today's exceptional string quartets and are Ensemble-in-Residence at Florida International University in Miami. Their sound has been called “complex” but with an “old world flavor.” Strad Magazine described the Amernet as “...a group of exceptional ability.”
The Amernet's performance schedule has taken the quartet across the Americas and to Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. They have collaborated with many of today's most prominent artists and ensembles including the Tokyo and Ying quartets as well as Shmuel Ashkenasi, Roberto Diaz, Gary Hoffman, Ida Kavafian, Anthony McGill, Joseph Kalichstein, Sherrill Milnes, and Michael Tree. Members are violinists Misha Vitenson and Avi Nagin, violist Michael Klotz and cellist Jason Calloway. Much more about them at https://www.amernetquartet.com/about.
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