PUBLIQuartet in Performance, Jan. 29
by Bailey Basham, Messenger Staff Writer
Acclaimed New York-based string quartet PUBLIQuartet will perform on the Mountain next week as a part of Sewanee’s Performing Arts Series.
Founded in 2010, PUBLIQuartet is an award-winning New York City-based string quartet whose genre-bending programs range from 20th-century masterworks to newly commissioned pieces. The group is known for their re-imaginations of classical works featuring improvisations that expand the idea of a traditional string quartet.
Hamilton Berry, a Nashville native and a lifelong cellist, joined the group last year. An alumnus of the Sewanee Summer Music Festival, he said his time on the Mountain was transformative.
“My parents are both music lovers, and my mom started me on violin when I was four. I was home sick from kindergarten one day, and I saw Yo-Yo Ma playing on ‘Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.’ I asked my mom if I could learn to play the cello, and the rest is history,” he said. “It was during my summers in Sewanee when I decided I really wanted to take the cello seriously and pursue a career in music. Being in Sewanee at 13 or 14 somewhat coincided with the time when I needed to own my musicianship and get serious about it. I still think of it as the springboard to my being serious about the cello.”
PUBLIQuartet’s Grammy-nominated new album, “Freedom and Faith,” features women artists whose music represents resilience, resistance and subversion. Composers, including Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald, Jessica Meyer and Hildegard Von Bingen, highlight the diversity and legacy of women in music during the last millennium.
“We like to call attention to composers and great pieces of music that traditionally have not been performed as much,” he said. Composers such as George Walker, an American pianist and organist who was the first African-American to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Music.
“On this program, one of the pieces you’ll hear is kind of a reinvention of a piece by Dvorak. The question that we started with these improvisations is, ‘What is American?’ Dvorak was a Czech guy who ended up coming over to teach at a music school in New York, and he was inspired by American music,” he said. “His assistant, Harry T. Burleigh, was an African-American baritone. I think through him and others, Dvorak discovered African-American traditions and spirituals and the blues. This music was really the predecessor of jazz and rock and hip hop, and our improvisations weave in all those styles and put them up against excerpts of the original.”
PUBLIQuartet will perform at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 29, in Guerry Auditorium. University of the South ID holders may pick up one free ticket per ID in Guerry 129 the week of the concert, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tickets can be purchased for $20 at