Playing out a musical mission

In 1991, when the Marian Anderson Quartet won the coveted International Cleveland Quartet Competition in 1991, the first African American ensemble to do so, a sense of mission and status as role models were neatly laid out. That sense of mission underscored the natural boldness of their music-making at Occidental College on Sunday.

Once ensemble-in-residence at Cal State Los Angeles, it’s currently at Texas A&M;, which gave the concert an air of a quasi-homecoming.

The name comes from the acclaimed, late African American contralto, and work by African American composers often blends with quartet standards. Here, Beethoven and Dvorak framed the centerpiece Quartet by African American composer Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, written in 1951, at age 16. Building around the spiritual “Calvary,” the composer stirs in jazz harmonies and rhythms, and touches of rock ‘n’ roll and gospel. Though sometimes awkward, it’s mainly a movingly idealistic piece, inserting American colors into a European canvas. The opposite cultural effect is heard in Dvorak’s “American” quartet, written during the Czech’s visit to Iowa and interwoven with elements of spirituals and Sioux music. Attired in colorful African dress, the group stressed its policy of informality, with verbal program notes and a friendly Q&A; with the audience.

Part of the agenda, founding violist Diedra Lawrence said, is to bring their music to “every corner of a community,” including schools, meeting spaces and jails.

As it happened, the college’s Herrick Chapel, with its excessive reverberation, was a challenging space in terms of clarity. The group sounded remote, almost dreamlike, and, in the opener, Beethoven’s Quartet in C Minor, Opus 18, No. 4, it worked through roughness, as if finding its voice in this space. The four did find their voice, and it was a tight, empathetic and purposeful one.