About Sirius Quartet & PCMF
As a non-conventional string quartet spawning from New York City's "Downtown" scene during the early 90s, Sirius Quartet (formerly Sirius String Quartet) has always been in the forefront of contemporary music making, constantly exploring new sounds and compositions from the most cutting edge composers. The latest incarnation of the group --- Fung Chern Hwei and Gregor Huebner (violins), Ron Lawrence (viola), and Jeremy Harman (cello) --- pushes the envelope even further by opening up the possibilities of a string quartet being more than a string quartet, and closer to a jazz or rock band. Three out of our four members compose original music for the group, and all four of us improvise and jam extensively during live performances, disregarding the confinement of genre boundaries, fully embracing music as music by itself.
We call our music "Progressive Chamber Music".
In 2016, we established a mini DIY festival in NYC called the "Progressive Chamber Music Festival" (PCMF), from awareness of the existence of various chamber ensembles not unlike us, and having trouble finding suitable platforms to present their own brand of genre-defying music. Serving as a bridge between these excellent musicians and the general audience, we have been enjoying great success, with the performers' roster becoming more and more impressive each year, and audience numbers ever growing. So far, we have had internationally acclaimed musicians such as Theo Bleckmann/Ben Monder Duo, Breath and Hammer (David Krakauer and Kathleen Tagg), Mark Feldman/Sylvie Courvoisier Duo, Erik Friedlander, String Noise and performing in the festival, as well as younger up-and-coming groups and artists like Seven)Suns, RighteousGIRLS, Warp Trio, Colin Hinton Quartet, Rob Mosher's Brooklynburg, Allison Loggins-Hull from Flutronix, and many more. For 2019, we have already confirmed the magnificent Brandon Ross, Satoshi Takeishi/Shoko Nagai Duo and Theremin Noir (Rob Schwimmer, Uri Caine and Mark Feldman) in our roster.
We also brought PCMF to Munich, Germany, last year, where we had two nights featuring top musicians from the country: soprano Marlis Petersen, Munich Composers Collective, Ark Noir, etc., performing to a packed house in the Milla Club, and covered by a glorious review in Neue Musikzeitung, Germany's oldest and most formidable new music paper.
What We Need & What You Get
Naturally, running a music festival takes a lot of time, energy, and money. In the past three years, we have been paying the expenses out of our own pockets --- renting venues, printing posters, etc. --- besides personally running around the city to drop promo materials, and publicizing the festival with whatever limited resources available. The festival's musicians all participated on a voluntary basis, splitting the cover charge we received from the audience, just because they believe in the philosophy of the festival and wanted to be a part of it.
We are starting this campaign mainly because we know that the great musicians we were so lucky to have really deserve way more than what we can offer them. They were the reason we have enjoyed so much success in previous years. Besides that, we are also looking for a strategically located venue, to be more accessible to most concert-goers from different corners of the City, which also usually means higher rent. Not to mention the amount of work involved in the background in terms of publicity, correspondence, ushering, etc. For these, we intend to hire a few interns or a "street team" to help us out.
Our goal for the campaign is to ultimately raise $20,000 for all the aforementioned purposes. If we do not achieve the campaign goal, we will prioritize paying our musicians acceptable industry rates (if possible) and the remainder will go to publicity and renting a venue.
Contributors will receive rewards such as free festival admission, CDs, handwritten score, an original composition from a Sirius Quartet member, or a house concert, according to the amount contributed.
Other Ways You Can Help
We fully understand that not everybody has the resources to make monetary contributions, but worry not! Putting a word out for the campaign and for the festival is also an invaluable act that we would really appreciate! If you would be so kind, please use the Indiegogo share tool to share this campaign with any of your friends that you think could help us reaching our goal, and please don't forget to tell everyone about our festival, we would be forever grateful.
Thank you very much for your time, we hope you can help us out!
