Edgewood String Quartet to perform at new Picasso immersive experience

March 24th, 2022

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Edgewood String Quartet formed to provide socially distanced, masked, live concerts in safe spaces for the public. Now that concerts and shows are resuming in person and indoors, the Edgewood String Quartet is performing at Pullman Yards in a program called “Tasting Notes: Dinner with Picasso.” The current “Imagine Picasso” exhibit currently on view at Pullman Yards inspired this concert. The hour-long performance also includes a four-course dinner in relation to the music. “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes was joined via Zoom by violinist Adelaide Federici of the Edgewood String Quartet and Adam Rosenfelt, owner of Pullman Yards, to discuss this multifaceted evening.

Interview Highlights:

About Pullman Yards:

“It’s quite an extraordinary site. It’s 27 acres, inclusive of 12 historic buildings, all built between 1904 and 1965. Now, all of the buildings were in various stages of disrepair. Of the 12 buildings, none were in repair. They were all beat up pretty badly, but what is without dispute is the beautiful architecture from the time period, the architectural significance in the bones, and what we learned was the Civil Rights history in that part of the time when the site was being built during the early 20th century,” said Rosenfelt.

How the Edgewood String Quartet orchestrates their performances:

“When we started out, we wouldn’t just play all of Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons,’ we would play some of the seasons and we would talk about Vivaldi and give it some kind of modern-day perspective. The four of us have grown up with classical music forever and ever, but lots of audience members don’t know anything about Vivaldi. But if you tell them a few pieces of information that they can listen out for, it can totally change their experience,” said Federici. “Now we do some pops-heavy concerts, like we have a show that’s mostly the music of Queen. But we play a few opera arias in there. There are people that come up to us afterwards and say ‘I had no idea that opera could be so moving and such an experience.’ And now maybe they’ll go and hear opera.”

About “Tasting Notes: Dinner with Picasso:”

“In this particular show, being that it’s Picasso-themed, it’s meant to be in tuned with Spanish influences with the food and the drinks. Adelaide and her partners in the quartet have put together a mix Spanish influence show,” said Rosenfelt.

He added, “We hope the audience is able to come and appreciate the art in a slightly different way, equally authentic.”

The event is March 25 at 7 p.m. More information can be found here. A second event has been added for April 15; tickets are available here.