Los Angeles Flute Quartet: News

"Bioplasm" (from our CD 'Above and Beyond' (available via this website....) was aired throughout the state of Oklahoma, on a radio show called "The Composer Next Door." http://www.thecomposernextdoor.org/currentplaylist.html
and you can hear a stream of this on http://www.kcscfm.com/listen_now.asp

Also, Bioplasm was aired for a *second* time a few weeks ago on WNYC-FM
(New York City), on John Schaefer's show, New Sounds, and has also been
featured twice on KUSC-FM, on Alan Chapman's show "Modern
Masterpieces."
Listen to it now on our Music page!

LAFQ's CD, 'Above and Beyond' (available on this website....) was featured on The New Edge, a two hour radio program airing Tuesday afternoons from 2-4pm on WMBR 88.1FM in
Cambridge, MA, and webcasting at http://www.wmbr.org. The feature was played on 2/6/07

The New Edge is devoted to creative and innovative instrumental music.

Missed our Zipper Hall Concert?
Go to our 'Listen' page to hear some live excerpts from that memorable night. Check out our next concert in Pasadena too!

Just go to the listen section of our page to hear the KMZT commercial for our upcoming LAFQ Unzipped Concert!

'Above and Beyond' is now available for download through itunes. Just look in our store or click this link....
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playListId=154031064

'Above and Beyond' continues to be aired across the nation, with over 60 stations now playing including Satellite and Cable Radio. Look in our Reviews section to see what they are saying about us!

(Felix Skowronek, University of Washington, Seattle 2004)
With this short rhetorical review of the Los Angeles Flute Quartet, the Los Angeles Times gives an approving nod to the inclusion of both the specific and generic ensemble into the ranks of serious chamber music. And why not indeed? The flute quartet, i.e. a grouping of four like instruments, has been around since the early 19th century, a time of experimentation with and evolution of woodwind instruments. A repertoire was created by flutist composers who although not household names in the larger world, were and are widely-known among flutists. Additions to this repertoire were made later in the century and then into the 1900s. More recently, the inclusion of other instruments of the flute family has attracted the attention of numerous modern composers, bringing the ensemble full-circle in a sense to its origins as a medieval and renaissance "consort".
Instrumental music in the early years developed from vocal music, especially with regard to ranges - i.e. soprano, alto, tenor and bass. String, wind and brass instruments were built in "families"of sizes parallel to the vocal distributions. A good example is the recorder, an end-blown vertical flute very popular in its day and with us still in a "family consort" of soprano, alto, tenor and bass. With the development of "independent" instrumental music, a kind of "natural selection" determined which instruments would survive. For example, bassoons had a family of sizes including soprano, but the upper-range instruments eventually dissapeared, with the lower-range examples undergoing further development and remaining as we know them now.
Today, the flute quartet shows its flexibility as both an ensemble of four same-sized instruments and also in its "family" of piccolo, C flute, alto flute, bass flute and contra-bass flute. In addition to its classical and romantic repertoire, the ensemble is well-represented by modern works as well as arrangements of renaissance and baroque music suitably rendered into the "consort" format. The Los Angeles Flute Quartet is a leading representative of this genre.
- F. Skowronek