FREE Courtroom Concert: Lux String Quartet

Lux String Quartet is a Twin-Cities based ensemble that brings a dynamic edge to performance and education. Since 2013, Lux has maintained an active presence in a wide array of musical spheres, from concert halls and churches to coffee shops and podcasts.

The members of this creative quartet contribute a wide spectrum of musical perspectives, and frequently collaborate with local and international artists. The group is committed to performing 20th and 21st-century repertoire, as well as works by living composers, including Twin Cities’ own David Evan Thomas and the Dean of Music at The Juilliard School, David Ludwig. During the 22/23 season Lux performed David Evan Thomas’s Trio innocente with Minnesota-based dancer and choreographer Danielle Ricci. In the 24/25 season, the quartet premiered the first work written for and dedicated to Lux, Confessions of a Pangolin by Australian composer, Nicholas Vines.

Lux performs in several concert series including the Schubert Club Courtroom Concert Series, the Waverly Chamber Music Series, the Lakes Chamber Music Society, Music Among Friends Series at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum in Winona, and the Music @ Lynnhurst in Minneapolis. Dedicated to music education and instilling a love for art in the next generation, Lux regularly presents recitals and workshops at elementary schools, early music education programs, and middle and high school orchestra programs in partnership with Schmitt Music. The quartet has served as MPR ClassNotes Artist for four seasons and is currently quartet-in-residence at the Colorado Chamber Music Institute. This winter Lux entered its first competition, the Charleston International Music Competition, and was awarded First Prize.

Program Note: The Law of the Tongue
The Law of the Tongue is inspired by the unique history of whaling in the town of Eden on the New South Wales south coast. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, this industry was based on the extraordinary collaboration of people and orcas – otherwise known as killer whales – in the hunting of baleen whales.

The particulars of the hunt are in themselves fascinating. The orcas would herd and harass a baleen into the deep waters of Eden’s Twofold Bay, blocking its escape. An individual orca then alerted the whalers by beating the water with its tail just outside their homes. Consequently, orcas and people would join forces, the former continuing their attacks and the latter in row boats going in with harpoon and lance for the kill. The spoils were then divvied up along very specific lines. While the bulk of the carcass went to the whalers, the
orcas took as their share the much sought-after lips and tongue. This bargain was known by the locals as ‘the law of the tongue.’

The wonders of this story, however, go beyond just the hunt and its aftermath. For one, Eden’s whaling grew out of a pre-existing relationship between the orcas and the area’s indigenous Yuin people. Not only did the Yuin work alongside the settlers in the new industry, their cultural attitudes – such as considering killer whales blood relatives – were adopted as well. And yet, as amazingly rich as it was, this symbiosis was also gory and cruel, as is apparent from eyewitness accounts. The moral quandaries it raises so clearly in
today’s social context were not lost on those who experienced it firsthand.

The Law of the Tongue explores both the history and practices of Eden’s whaling industry and the complex web of emotions they evoke. Many thanks to Acacia Quartet for encouraging the expansion of this work from its original one-movement form. The piece is dedicated to the memory of Peter Sculthorpe, without whose creative legacy it could not have existed.