In celebration of our 20th season, The Playground is planning a 20-hour MARATHON! This event will be broken into four blocks, each at a different venue in Denver. MARATHON will be structured to highlight all that we do as an ensemble and organization: concerts, community music-making, sessions for music educators, healing arts events, and an improvised communal cool down in the early hours of Sunday morning.
String Quartet Concert
Saturday March 21, 2026, 2:30 pm
Stanley Marketplace
2501 Dallas St, Aurora, CO 80010
Free to attend
The Playground Ensemble partners with Friends of Chamber Music to bring an afternoon of music creation and community to The Stanley Marketplace. In keeping with the spirit of the Stanley, the Playground String Quartet provides an eclectic sample of works by Latino, Indigenous, and women composers. Including works by Gabriela Ortiz, Raven Chacon, and Caroline Shaw, this program contains the breadth of both Playground's style and their mission.
Sarah Whitnah, Violin
Robyn Julyan, Violin
Catherine Beeson, Viola
David Short, Cello
Program
Eclectic Huapango and Two Dances: String Quartet No. 1 by Alfonso Molina
This string quartet is based on three Mexican traditional rituals from the prehispanic world, that have prevailed after the Spanish conquest of Mexico. This quartet uses rhythmic motifs from the old and new Mexican culture. The Huapango rhythm — which is normally used in Mexican songs from the Huasteca Potosina region — is used as an ostinato rhythm at the beginning of the piece, using a ternary basic unit.
The second movement (Dance I) is based on a traditional ritual from the Totonac Indians from the Gulf of Mexico that is still celebrated today in the 21st century, with the name of “The Flyers of Papantla”, where four men slowly descend a high pole, to which they are all tied to with a rope to one of their feet, while another one plays a pentatonic flute from the top of the pole. This ritual represents the five elements from the indigenous world that they treasure, as well as the changes that take place during the year in their community.
The third movement (Dance II) is based on the prehispanic conception, that volcanic stones hold old souls inside them and that these souls, escape in the form of sparks when being exposed to fire.
Altar de Muertos by Gabriela Ortiz
I. Ofrenda
The tradition of the Day of the Dead festivities in Mexico is the source of inspiration for the creation of a work for string quartet whose ideas could reflect the internal search between the real and the magic, a duality always present in Mexican culture, from the past to this present.
Altar de Muertos is divided into four parts, each of these describe diverse moods, traditions and the spiritual worlds which shape to the global concept of death in Mexico, plus my own personal concept of death. First part: "Ofrenda." This music describes the visit of four spirits to the altar, each one singing his/her own ofrenda (offering) towards the end of this movement, the four spirits converge in a single chant to as the end of a funeral procession.
Metro Chabacano by Javier Álvarez
“The seminal idea for Metro Chabacano came from an earlier piece for string orchestra, Canción de Tierra y Esperanza, which I had presented to my parents as a Christmas gift in 1986… In 1990, the sculptor Marcos Limenez approached me with the idea to use Canción to accompany one of his astonishing kinetic installations, which was to be on display in one of Mexico City’s busiest subway stations for a period of three months. This provided the perfect motivation for me to revise the piece and for the Cuarteto Latinoamericano to do the first performance, which took place in 1991 at the Metro Chabacano subway station as part of the dedication ceremonies…
Metro Chabacano has a continuous eighth-note movement of moderately driving speed from which short melodic solos emerge from each instrument. The repeated notes give a false sense of simplicity; although the piece is brief and in a single movement, the rhythms, accents and melodic fragments that emerge from the perpetual motion background are intricately playful.”
Homenaje a Gismonti by Arturo Márquez
Arturo Marquez's Homenaje a Gismonti pays tribute to the music of Brazilian guitarist Egberto Gismonti. The piece is built over an extended vamp on alternating chords, starting with a guitar-like pizzicato. This is interspersed with passages in which minimalist repeated patterns or held chords form a background for free-flowing melody. Increasingly complex cross-rhythms and diminutions build towards the end of the piece, culminating in a final unison flourish.
The Journey of the Horizontal People by Raven Chacon
The Journey of the Horizontal People is a future creation story telling of a group of people traveling from west to east, across the written page, contrary to the movement of the sun, but involuntarily and unconsciously allegiant to the trappings of time. With their bows, these wanderers sought out others like them, knowing that they could survive by finding these other clans who resided in the east, others who shared their linear cosmologies. It is told that throughout the journey, in their own passage of time, this group became the very people they were seeking.
Plan and Elevation by Caroline Shaw
I. The Ellipse
II. The Cutting Garden
III. The Herbaceous Border
IV. The Orangery
V. The Beech Tree
“I have always loved drawing the architecture around me when traveling, and some of my favorite lessons in musical composition have occurred by chance in my drawing practice over the years. While writing a string quartet to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Dumbarton Oaks, I returned to these essential ideas of space and proportion — to the challenges of trying to represent them on paper. The title, Plan & Elevation, refers to two standard ways of representing architecture — essentially an orthographic, or “bird’s eye,” perspective (“plan”), and a side view which features more ornamental detail (“elevation”). This binary is also a gentle metaphor for one’s path in any endeavor — often the actual journey and results are quite different (and perhaps more elevated) than the original plan.
I was fortunate to have been the inaugural music fellow at Dumbarton Oaks in 2014-15. Plan & Elevation examines different parts of the estate’s beautiful grounds and my personal experience in those particular spaces. Each movement is based on a simple ground bass line which supports a different musical concept or character.”