On May 21 at 12:10 p.m. the free admission Glendale Noon Concerts will feature the Fiato Quartet performing string quartets by Franz Joseph Haydn and Florence B. Price. Performances are in the sanctuary of Glendale City Church, 610 E. California Ave. in Glendale.

Glendale Noon Concerts is celebrating 17 years of presenting free admission concerts every first and third Wednesday for Glendale and the Southland community.

Upcoming concerts will be updated at http://glendalenoonconcerts.blogspot.com.

  The concert by the Fiato Quartet (Carrie Kennedy – violin, Joel Pargman – violin, Aaron Oltman – viola and Ryan Sweeney – cello) (https://www.fiatoquartet.com) will feature Franz Joseph Haydn’s Quartet in E flat Major, Op. 33, no. 2 “The Joke”  and Florence B. Price Quartet No. 2 in A Minor, “Juba.”

Fiato Quartet, winner of the 2022 Beverly Hills National Auditions, was formed in 2008. In addition to their acclaimed work as Fiato, they are also members of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Pasadena Symphony, Long Beach Symphony, New West Symphony and Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra. As studio musicians in Los Angeles, they also record music for movies and television. In addition to the standard quartet repertoire, Fiato has a passion for new music. They have premiered 10 new string quartets by local composers, including works by Julia Adolphe and Adam Schoenberg. Each member of Fiato brings a unique set of experiences and training to the ensemble, having studied with the Tokyo, Takacs, Guarneri, American, Miami and Emerson Quartets.

The program will start with a quartet by Franz Joseph Haydn, who was known as the father of the string quartet. Haydn wrote 68 string quartets. This quartet is Haydn’s second quartet from his op. 33 set of six quartets, published in 1782. Haydn described these quartets as being written in a new and special way. One new and special feature of these quartets is the fact that in all six, Haydn wrote a Scherzo instead of the typical Minuet movement. Scherzo literally means “joke,” and this second quartet has been nicknamed “The Joke.”

The concert will end with a piece, “Juba,” by Florence Price who was a true pioneer for women and Black composers. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1887, Price went on to earn degrees in piano and organ performance at the New England Conservatory. She composed her first symphony in 1931 and it was premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra the following year. This was the first work by a Black woman to be performed by a major symphony orchestra. Despite her very successful and prodigious career as a composer, Price was nearly forgotten after her death in 1953. It wasn’t until 2018 when Schirmer announced that it had acquired the publishing rights to Price’s music that her compositions began to be rediscovered. Fiato Quartet will play the third mov, titled “Juba,” from that quartet.