Galliard String Quartet Performs at KCA (w/ video)

From left to right, Claire Sakai Hazzard, Wu Hung, Nancy Masaki, Ethan Pernela and Joanna Morrison.

The Galliard String Quartet and Friends performed before nearly 200 people at the Performing Arts Center at Kaua‘i Community College in Puhi last Sunday.

It was the second-to-the-last event for the Kaua‘i Concert Association’s successful 2013/2014 season, which will close with the Red Clay Jazz Festival in June.

Claire Sakai Hazzard and Wu Hung, violins; Ethan Pernela and Anna Womack, violas; and Joanna Morrison and Nancy Masaki, cellos, performed Johannes Brahms’ Sextet No. 1 in Bb Major, Opus 18, and Franz Schubert’s Quintet in C Major, Opus 163.

Brahms composed the Opus 18 in 1859, when he was only 27 years old.

Sakai Hazzard said Schubert completed the Opus 163 in 1828, two months before he died. The quintet would not be performed publically until 1850, when Robert Shumman found it, along with other compositions, at the home of Shubert’s brother.

Opus 163 is regarded as Shubert’s finest chamber work and one the greatest chamber compositions, according to Sakai Hazzard.

Standing ovation for, from left to right, Claire Sakai Hazzard, Wu Hung, Nancy Masaki, Anna Womack, Ethan Pernela and Joanna Morrison.

Closing the show, the Galliard String Quartet — Sakai Hazzard, Hung, Pernela and Morrison — spiced up things by performing music from their 1996 album “Songs of Liliu‘okalani,” which contains 17 songs composed by Hawai‘i Queen Lydia Liliuo‘kalani.

The next and final event for KCA’s 2013/2014 season, the 6^th Red Clay Jazz Festival, will be held from June 25 to 29 at various locations around the island. Some of the featured musicians are Diane Schuur, Mississipi Heat, Swing Shift, Jimmy Borges and Betty Loo Taylor, and Ken Emerson and Will Bernard.

Visit www.redclayjazz.org for more information and schedule of shows.