The all-female ATLYS string quartet formed in 2016.
More than five years in the making, a deeply meaningful string-quartet record will be available to local music lovers five days before its world premiere.
Its performers – the all-female ATLYS string quartet – will play excerpts from their new “Sonnenberg Suite” in a concert on Sunday, November 10, at Sound Conservatory (504 17th Street, Moline IL). Exclusive copies of their CD, recorded in New York during the summer of 2023, will be for sale. The first ATLYS classical disc will be released widely in all formats on November 15.
“I’m really grateful to be invited. We love playing in the Quad Cities, I’m really excited,” violinist Sabrina Tabby said recently. The full neo-Romantic suite (written by Ari Fisher) will be performed in a November 17 concert in Evanston, Illinois.
In addition to Tabby, the eclectic, boundary-pushing foursome is comprised of Jinty McTavish, violin, Rita Andrade, viola, and Sabrina’s twin sister, Genevieve Tabby, cello. Their last QC concerts were in October of 2023 at Davenport's St. Ambrose University and in February of 2023 at Davenport’s Raccoon Motel.
The long journey of “Sonnenberg Suite” – inspired by the beautiful Sonnenberg Gardens in Canandaigua, New York – moving from dream to reality was filled with ecstasy and unexpected agony.
In 2019, ATLYS met Thomas Mees, who attended one of their performances with the Geneva Music Festival in the Finger Lakes of upstate New York. Immediately after the performance, he told the women about the enchanting and historical Sonnenberg Gardens and Mansion in Canandaigua “that is certainly not your average manicured estate, but rather a breathtaking system of exquisitely themed, highly curated, and eclectic formal gardens,” according to the quartet’s Kickstarter campaign to fund the recording.
For more than a decade, Mees had envisioned a piece of music inspired by the magic and mysticism of this treasure, with a movement dedicated to each of the themed sections of the garden (e.g. a Japanese Garden, a Rock Garden, an Old-Fashioned Garden, etc.). He admitted that it wasn’t until seeing the quartet performance that day that he had an epiphany, according to ATLYS: This music should be written for the intimate but powerful string quartet, rather than a larger ensemble.
“It was a long, long dream of his to have a piece dedicated to the Sonnenberg Gardens,” Sabrina Tabby said recently. “Nobody took action. He’s in his 80s, not a practicing musician. He would attend lots of concerts at the Rochester Philharmonic.”
When Mees talked to Tabby, she said it was a cool idea, but it would be expensive. Mees donated about half the hefty five-figure cost of commissioning and recording the 10-movement, hour-long suite.
“He’s been very generous all along,” Tabby said, noting thatb other private donors covered the rest. ATLYS has partnered with composer Fisher often, writing original pieces and arrangements for them over many years.
“When we started ATLYS in 2016, since the beginning he’s been chomping at the to write for us,” she said. He’s penned arrangements for pop covers (including “True Colors” and Rihanna’s “Diamonds”) and they’re about half of what the quartet plays – which usually has a varied, non-classical repertoire.
Mees really wanted the Sonnenberg Suite to be reminiscent of the 19th-century classical tradition, standard repertoire. “He didn’t want anything too modern sounding,” Tabby said. “He really loved Dvorak, Brahms, and Beethoven. He really, really wanted the music to sound that way.”
It turns out Fisher “is an absolute genius” in that style, she said. Each movement of the suite reflects different gardens in the historic state park, per Mees’ request.
“A lot of composers don’t want to be told what to do, but it worked out perfectly with Ari,” Tabby said. “I don’t think there are many composers out there like Ari who would have been as perfect for this project.”
It was premiered at Sonnenberg in May of 2021, the first ATLYS concert since COVID, held outside, soon after New York lifted its mask mandate.
“He was absolutely delighted,” she said of Mees’ reaction, noting he had attended some rehearsals before the premiere.
They performed sections of it on tours over the next two years, and recorded the full suite in Westchester County, New York, in August of 2023.
Partnering with World-Class Producer
Tabby was referred to respected record producer Adam Abeshouse by Time for Three – a string trio (similarly genre-bending like ATLYS) that he had recorded, and won a 2023 Grammy for Best Classical Instrumental Solo.
“I was kind of shocked that he would give us the time of day,” she recalled. The recording was completed just days after Tabby and her husband had moved to Nashville.
Over a career that lasted more than 30 years, Abeshouse (who was also a concert violinist) made hundreds of records with some of classical music’s biggest stars – including violinists Joshua Bell and Itzhak Perlman, pianists Garrick Ohlsson, Leon Fleisher and Lara Downes, and the Kronos Quartet. In 2000, he won the Grammy for classical music producer of the year.
Abeshouse died on October 10, 2024, at his home in Westchester County, New York. He was 63, and had been diagnosed this past April with bile duct cancer.
“It’s so tragic,” Tabby said. “He had so many plans. It’s very, very sad.”
“We had heard so many incredible things about his ears and his editing skills, and unsurprisingly, he did not disappoint in that regard,” ATLYS posted on its Facebook page. “He consistently wowed us with his ability to track takes and give just the right notes that would help us play better while still keeping us from getting in our heads too much. And as promised, we received a meticulous edit a few months after we had left the studio.”
“The way he treated us in and out of the studio encouraged us so much,” the post says. “Adam had won many Grammys recording albums with all kinds of world class musicians, but even though we are a small group, he was genuinely excited about our album and made us feel like he truly believed in us and what we were doing. That meant so incredibly much to us. We came out of that week with so much gratitude, feeling like we had truly gained another member of our ATLYS family.”
“It feels so strange to be releasing this album without him here,” the quartet said. “It's so crazy that we recorded this and spent time with him just a little over a year ago, and now he's gone.”
Many Musical Balls in the Air
Acclaimed for more than half her life, Sabrina and her sister were featured at age 15 in a 2007 Carnegie Hall performance. In a youth program, recorded for NPR’s From the Top radio and public TV program, the twins joined Rochelle Chester, a 17-year-old Navajo composer from Arizona, on stage to perform Rochelle's "Moon's Lullaby."
A founding member (2010) of the New York-based new music ensemble Contemporaneous, Sabrina was prominently featured on Innova Recordings' album Stream of Stars: Music of Dylan Mattingly. In 2016, she formed the crossover, mold-breaking ATLYS, representing, for a time, Lincoln Center in performances on Holland America cruise lines around the world.
Curating programs that are both diverse and intriguing, ATLYS has graced stages such as Red Rocks and the Gorge with more than 1,000 performances under their belt, and boasting more than 10 million streams on Spotify, they have inspired listeners across the globe. ATLYS has revolutionized their paradigm, perfecting the art of remote recording, launching a YouTube channel, and publishing their unique arrangements.
Sabrina and violist Rita Andrade more recently recorded music for the movie trailer for Lee, a 2024 film starring Kate Winslet, by composer Juan Dussan. ATLYS has recorded other film scores he’s written. He did not, however, write music for the Lee soundtrack; just its trailer.
“We love Juan’s music, and he started working with us during the pandemic in 2020,” Tabby said.
Sabrina (who is married to violist and conductor Ernesto Estigarribia) continues to perform with the Quad City Symphony Orchestra, since they moved to Nashville, Tennessee, in early August of 2023. Estigarribia (former music director for the QCSO youth ensembles) is on the music faculty at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
Tabby is in her second season as concertmaster of Mankato Symphony Orchestra in Minnesota, where Estigarribia is music director in his third year.
Besides QCSO and Mankato, she also plays for the Owensboro Symphony in Kentucky, a two-hour drive from Nashville.
Estigarribia will return to the QC to conduct the local orchestra in another film score: “Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows: Part 1” in Concert, which will enjoy two performances at the Adler Theatre on November 23.
Tabby will play in most of the QCSO Masterworks this season, except a couple that conflict with Mankato. In fact, she will have been in the region for three programs in less than a month.
In addition to the November 10 Moline concert, the QCSO Masterworks II (featuring Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream) is November 2 and 3, and Tabby performed a unique new solo work (in its world premiere) at the University of Iowa's Hancher Auditorium from October 17 through 19, as part of the university's Dance Gala.
The solo violin piece – “O Quanta Qualia,” by Jacob Bancks -- featured four dancers, and Tabby also moved as she played.
“It’s part of the choreography,” she said the day before it opened. Tabby had worked with Bancks (who teaches at Augustana College) for his 2021 opera “Karkinos,” in the orchestra, and that production also was choreographed by UI associate professor Kristin Marrs.
The new Bancks piece “embodies a deep immersion in both dance and music, showcasing the fluid relationship between the two art forms,” the UI Web site said. “By integrating live music with dance, Marrs, along with composer Bancks and violinist Sabrina Tabby, have co-created a fully immersive performance where the boundaries between the arts dissolve.”
The plan is for Bancks to expand this piece for ATLYS, Tabby said.
It was a lofty career highlight for her to be part of the QCSO Gala concert this past April with world-renowned pianist Emanuel Ax, performing Beethoven’s iconic “Emperor” Piano Concerto, as well as a Mozart concerto.
“It was such a fulfilling experience, I think I’m spoiled now,” Tabby said, noting she never played that work before. “I think no one’s ever gonna be that good again.”
Tabby has performed with soloists of Ax’s caliber before (such as pianist Garrick Ohlsson) but said she “was particularly taken with his musicianship.” Ax had been practicing all day in the hall, she recalled.
“For someone at that age, that prestige level, who is still working that hard, is very inspiring,” Tabby said. “He’s not phoning anything in.”
Tickets for the November 10 ATLYS concert at Moline's Sound Conservatory are $15-50 and available at Eventbrite.com.
