Premieres April 25, 2021, 7:30 pm EDT
Available to stream through December 31, 2021

Part of Five Boroughs Music Festival’s 2020-2021 digital mainstage season, noise/SILENCE is co-produced by the Argus Quartet and filmed at the Noguchi Museum. The concert explores the symbiosis of silence and sound through music inspired by and in response to the art of Isamu Noguchi. Noguchi’s sculptures provide a stunning backdrop to the Argus Quartet’s performances of works by John Cage, Rolf Wallin, Dorothy Rudd Moore, and Paul Wiancko, who joins the quartet as a guest performer for his piece, Vox Petra.

The Argus Quartet says, “The language we use to describe sound is rich with metaphor: both noise and silence can be deafening, we speak of both ‘brain chatter’ and a ‘quiet mind,’ noise can be ‘white’ or ‘static.’ It’s been said that ‘silence is the sharper sword.’ To humans, noise and silence can both empower and oppress us – from the cheering of a crowd to something left unsaid by a loved one, from chirping birds to an incessant alarm. John Cage – whose 4’33” famously explores the power of silence – aimed in his String Quartet in Four Parts to write a work that praised silence without actually using it. He described the piece ‘like the opening of another door; the possibilities implied are unlimited.’ This program explores the endless possibilities from silence to sound, emptiness to saturation, a drop in the ocean to the ocean itself.”