unfamiliar music series

Chicago Magazine: Best New-Music Series / July 16, 2013 by Doyle Armbrust

Best of Chicago

BEST NEW-MUSIC SERIES New music, as defined by Spektral Quartet violist Doyle Armbrust, has little in common with anything you might catch on Spotify. It’s more like frenetic performance pieces that range from two men shouting at the audience to the spoken-word monologues interwoven with flute melodies in Janice Misurell-Mitchell’s Amendment Blues No. 1. Armbrust created this monthly new-music night a year ago and found an enthusiastic audience; attend the next mind-bending installment on August 31 at 7 p.m.

Doyle Armbrust’s writing can be found in the pages of Strings Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Magazine, Crain’s Chicago Business, Q2 Music, and Time Out Chicago – as well as the program books of the University Musical Society, the Chicago Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and of course, the Spektral Quartet.

He is the founding violist of the Spektral Quartet and serves as the ensemble’s Minister of Propaganda.