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Quiet Streets

A virtual piano concerto by composer Elena Ruehr for pianist Lara Downes, QUIET STREETS is an ode to our silenced cities during the time of shelter in place, capturing the unexpected beauty and tranquil melancholy of a deserted cityscape.

The piece is performed live by Lara as piano soloist, accompanied by a virtual string orchestra and a saxophone heard playing a lonely nocturnal ballad from a fire escape high above the quiet streets.

Conceived as an intimate experience for a socially distanced audience, this piece can be offered in consecutive performances in the space of an evening, creating a unique opportunity to accommodate a significant audience divided into small groups and observing safety protocols.

Elena Ruehr says of her music “the idea is that the surface be simple, the structure complex.” An award winning faculty member at MIT, she has also been a Guggenheim Fellow, a fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute and composer-in-residence with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, which performed and recorded her major orchestral works (O’Keeffe Images, BMOP Sound) as well as the opera Toussaint Before the Spirits (Arsis Records). Three of her six string quartets were commissioned by the Cypress String Quartet, who have recorded Six String Quartets by Elena Ruehr (Avie), with the Borromeo Quartet and Stephen Salters. Her quartets have also been performed by numerous ensembles, including the Arneis, Biava, Borromeo, Lark, Quartet Nouveau, Roco and Shanghai string quartets. Her other recordings include Averno (Avie with the Trinity Choir, Julian Wachner, conducting), Jane Wang considers the Dragonfly (Albany), Lift (Avie), Shimmer (Metamorphosen Chamber Ensemble on Albany) and Shadow Light (The New Orchestra of Washington with Marcus Thompson on Acis).