William Thomas McKinley String Quartets Vol. 1 (MS104) is released digitally on 17 April 2026 by the McKinley Foundation, in partnership with Ulysses Arts.
Click cover above to pre-order from iTunes with digital booklet.
Stirng Quartet No. 1 is from McKinley's student days: two superficially contrasting movements, but full of subtle connections, including angular melodic lines, chromatically inflected intervals, imitative counterpoint and tripartite textures with melody and accompanyment and often a third line commenting on both.
Quartet No. 7's eight movements constitute a panoply of aesthetic directions, from sarcasm, pastiche and profound lyricism.
No. 4 - Fantasia Concertante - is a unapologetically modernist, embracing new complexity. Its a single movement: dense, deeply chromatic,and brilliantly textural—and yet remains accessible.
No. 9 (1992), subtitled “moments musicals”, incorporates jazz and abstract harmony into a coherent, mature whole, in eleven short movements with an early 1990s post-minimalist character.
Quartet No. 7's eight movements constitute a panoply of aesthetic directions, from sarcasm, pastiche and profound lyricism.
No. 4 - Fantasia Concertante - is a unapologetically modernist, embracing new complexity. Its a single movement: dense, deeply chromatic,and brilliantly textural—and yet remains accessible.
No. 9 (1992), subtitled “moments musicals”, incorporates jazz and abstract harmony into a coherent, mature whole, in eleven short movements with an early 1990s post-minimalist character.
Electronic press kit for reviewers and radio producers available from Ulysses Arts.