Review: Pacifica Quartet’s ‘American Voices’ is a Gem

By Greg Cahill | From the July-August 2024 issue of Strings Magazine

What a gem. The always-intriguing Pacifica Quartet, which hails from the American heartland (Bloomington, Indiana), has paired a major American-folk-music-influenced chamber work by Czech composer Antonín Dvořák (String Quartet in F major, Op. 96) with works by two African American composers and a Russian-born composer who scored such iconic American films as John Ford’s Western epic Stagecoach. The Dvořák, cast in a rustic, pentatonic style, is flawless, of course. It is followed by String Quartet in G major by Arkansas native Florence Price (1887–1953), the first Black woman to have compositions performed by a major US orchestra and a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music. This was her first string quartet, and folk and hymnal influences can heard throughout. American jazz is the driving force behind Russian-American composer Louis Gruenberg’s Four Diversions for String Quartet, Op. 32, especially the third movement with its blue notes and boogie-woogie-style rhythm. 

The closer is an American premiere commissioned for the album from James Lee III. The oratory “Pitch In,” which begins with a woeful cello passage, is based on a poem by Sylvia Dianne Beverly and addresses the issues of social justice and food insecurity. Folk music and E-minor pentatonic blues influences can be heard in the middle section. I also encourage you to check out American Stories, by the Pacifica Quartet and Anthony McGill, which features Lee’s Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet.