Episode 102 — April 8, 2021
Patrick Castillo: “Cirque” for violin
Performed by Kristin Lee

Violinist Kristin Lee presents Patrick Castillo’s Cirque for solo violin for this episode of the House Music series. A collaborator of Metropolis since 2009, Lee dedicates much of her time to commissioning new works and uniting different genres on one stage. She credits Metropolis with teaching her this open-minded attitude. 

Her intrigue with Metropolis began when she attended a concert that featured a gamelan ensemble. She’d never heard that style of music before, but that concert opened her mind to creative possibilities in contemporary classical music. One of her first major projects with the group came when she recorded a violin concerto by Vivian Fung that was inspired by the sounds of the gamelan, which she and Metropolis recorded at Tanglewood and went on to win Canada’s Juno Award for Best Classical Composition (2013). In her more than a decade working with Metropolis, she’s had a multitude of different experiences, but one of her most mind-blowing memories was a spectacular series with Metropolis Ensemble collaborating with Questlove and The Roots, which paired straight renditions of classical music with reimagined versions by artists like Keren Ann, Emily Wells, and Deerhoof.

Now, Lee’s the Artistic Director of her own series in Seattle, Emerald City Music, which is built upon the ideology of bringing multiple genres onto the stage at the same time. She also does yearly commissions of new music, which is how she met Patrick Castillo. When she discovered Cirque, she was intrigued by its conceptual, atonal, extended techniques, and loved the fact that even when the music feels random, it still ties together. So, she learned the piece for the House Music series, and recorded her video live from her apartment in New York.

Notes by Vanessa Ague

 
House Music: Bite-sized concerts recorded at homes around the world

In 2020-21, we created a weekly video series featuring short-form concerts of newly-commissioned works, supporting 208 artists around the world during the pandemic.