By Kevin McLaughlin
She ROARS!, a series celebrating living female composers, devoted its program at the Bop Stop on Sunday afternoon, May 31, to nine works by Cara Haxo performed by violinists Diana Pepelea Vardi and Callista Koh, violist Lauren Kuennen Poper, cellist Linda Atherton, flutist Linda White, and clarinetist Amitai Vardi.
Haxo’s use of varied instrumental combinations offered a glimpse into her creative process and Emily Laurance’s spoken introductions helped listeners understand the composer’s train of thought.
The opening work for string quartet, says the almanac (2024), inspired by Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “Sestina,” showed Haxo’s gift for turning literary structure into musical form.
Haxo adapts the poem’s formal pattern: six ending words return in new order across six stanzas and a final three-line envoi, or tag. In her quartet, that structure becomes six melodic fragments passed among the four instruments at shifting pitch levels that catch the poem’s quiet household sorrow.
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