OSVALDO GOLIJOV
Ever Yours
Acclaimed composer Osvaldo Golijov’s anticipated new album traces a throughline in his creative life: friendship, hope, memory, and faith as lived through music. Exquisitely rendered by Arethusa Quartet, Animato Quartet, Barry Shiffman, and Nicholas Schwartz, the album paints unforgettable images from Golijov’s living, ongoing journey, including a musical letter to late violinist Geoff Nuttall, showing a composer deeply engaged with belief, reflection, and connection. The album reaffirms Golijov’s commitment to chamber music as a space for human connection, where devotion, loss and renewal live on through sound.
VIDEO: Osvaldo Golijov's "Ever Yours"
performed by Arethusa Quartet, Animato Quartet & Nicholas Schwartz
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OSVALDO GOJIOV ~ Ever Yours
ALBUM PREVIEW
The title work, Ever Yours (2022, revised 2025), was Golijov’s final composition written for violinist Geoff Nuttall, his longtime collaborator and co-founder of the St. Lawrence String Quartet. The piece draws inspiration from Vincent van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo—always signed “Ever Yours”—and from Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet in D minor, Op. 76, No. 2 (“Quinten”), Nuttall’s most cherished work. “Starbound,” the second movement of the piece, landed in mid-December as the collection’s first single.
Tintype (2024) was written in response to Oren Rudavsky’s documentary Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire. Inspired by dreamlike sequences in which Wiesel remembers his father, the work unfolds in three movements that move between memory, lyrical reflection, and expressions of belief through the prayer “Ani Maamin.” The documentary will broadcast on PBS as part of the American Masters series on January 27—more information can be found here.
K’vakarat (1993), drawn from the Yom Kippur liturgy, reaches back to Golijov’s early career. Originally written for cantor Misha Alexandrovich and the Kronos Quartet and later included in The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind, it appears here in a new arrangement by violist Barry Shiffman for viola and string quartet, highlighting its intimate, vocal quality.
Also featured is Esperanza (2025), a work of renewal and quiet joy originally composed as the love theme for Francis Ford Coppola’s film Megalopolis. Built around a four-note motif that rises repeatedly before resolving, the chamber version on the album was created spontaneously during the Amsterdam sessions as a way to thank the musicians.
SINGLE: “Starbound”
Osvaldo Golijov on “Starbound”, the second movement of Ever Yours
“Geoff was the first person to understand what I was trying to say as a composer. My brother in music and life. I wrote Ever Yours, primarily, as a conversation about music, Haydn, friendship, life, and death, between Geoff and me. Geoff is now gone, and his (and my) beloved St. Lawrence String Quartet, which he co-founded and led for more than 30 years, has disbanded. But the idea of a conversation between friends continues to live in this new version of the work.”
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“In its original version (2022) for string octet, Ever Yours was the last piece I wrote for and dedicated to Geoff Nuttall, who was, and still is, my brother in music and life.
I was inspired primarily by two things: brotherhood, as embodied in the letters that Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo—which he always signed with the words ‘Ever Yours’—and the String Quartet, Op. 76, No. 2 by Joseph Haydn, who was the composer Geoff loved and admired the most.
Op. 76, No. 2 is, to my mind, a love letter to music. Its first movement is built entirely on two pairs of notes: A-D/E-A. The interval (distance) between the notes in each pair is a fifth, and that’s why this quartet is nicknamed “Quinten” [Fifths]. The fifth is not just an interval that Haydn chose at random among the twelve possibilities he had; it is the interval on which the grammar of the classical tonal language is built. Haydn’s prodigious powers of invention unveil many contrasting worlds born from those two pairs of fifths. For the first movement in Ever Yours, I have passages from Haydn’s first movement pass through a metaphorical prism, and thus new worlds are generated.
As Geoff was dying while I was writing the piece, I remembered the following passage from van Gogh’s letters: ‘Why, I say to myself, should the spots of light in the firmament be less accessible to us than the black spots on the map of France. Just as we take the train to go to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to go to a star.’ So, for the second movement in Ever Yours [Starbound], I place the theme of Haydn’s second movement in Op. 76, No. 2 under a metaphorical microscope. Doing this reveals enormous distances between the notes in the original, and makes hearable vibrations akin to interstellar dust that are inaudible in it. What in Haydn is a beautiful jewel becomes in Ever Yours an immense journey to the stars…”
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ALBUM INFORMATION
TITLE: Ever Yours
ARTIST: Osvaldo Golijov, Composer
FEATURING:
Arethusa Quartet: Daniel Rowland, Violin; Floor Le Coultre, Violin; Dana Zemtsov, Viola; Maja Bogdanovic, Cello
Animato Quartet: Tim Brackman, Violin; Inga Våga Gaustad, Violin; Elisa Karen Tavenier, Viola; Pieter de Koe, Cello
Nicholas Schwartz, Double Bass on Ever Yours and Esperanza
Barry Shiffman, Viola on Tintype and K’vakarat
SUMMARY: Acclaimed composer Osvaldo Golijov’s anticipated new album traces a throughline in his creative life: friendship, hope, memory, and faith as lived through music. Exquisitely rendered by Arethusa Quartet, Animato Quartet, Barry Shiffman, and Nicholas Schwartz, the album paints unforgettable images from Golijov’s living, ongoing journey, including a musical letter to late violinist Geoff Nuttall, showing a composer deeply engaged with belief, reflection, and connection. The album reaffirms Golijov’s commitment to chamber music as a space for human connection, where devotion, loss and renewal live on through sound.
CREDITS:
Produced and Edited by: Stephen Prutsman
Engineered by: Joeri Saal, Studio 150 Bethlehemkerk, Amsterdam
Mixed by: Alejandro Venguer
Mastered by: Oscar Zambrano, Zampol Productions
Graphic Design by: Chris Kornmann, Spit + Image
For Phenotypic Recordings
Michael Hostetler, Founder and CEO
Stephen Prutsman, Creative Director
Lisa Takemoto and Mary Cubero, Project Managers
In memory of Geoff Nuttall
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Osvaldo Golijov ~ Ever Yours
TRACKS 1-4. EVER YOURS (2024) (ca. 24’)
I. Sowing Fifths
II. Starbound
III. You Reap What You Sow
IV. Papa
Performing Artists: Arethusa Quartet ; Animato Quartet ; Nicholas Schwartz, Double Bass
Commissioned by the String Quartet Biennale Amsterdam with generous support from Monica Rosenzweig Armour, The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland, and San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Bass part arranged with Shawn Conley.
TRACKS 5–7. TINTYPE (2024) (ca. 23’)
I. Hebrew Melody
II. Elie dreams of his father
III. Ani Maamin
Performing artists: Arethusa Quartet; Barry Shiffman, Viola
Commissioned by Music in the Morning Vancouver with the assistance of an anonymous donor. Additional commissioning support from The Royal Conservatory with the support of Judith Gelber.
TRACK 8. K’VAKARAT (1993) (ca. 8’)
Performing artists: Arethusa Quartet ; Barry Shiffman, Viola
TRACK 9. ESPERANZA—Love Theme from the Soundtrack for Megalopolis (2025) (ca. 4’)
Performing artists: Arethusa Quartet ; Animato Quartet ; Nicholas Schwartz, Double Bass
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Ever Yours - Liner Notes
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“Geoff was the first person to understand what I was trying to say as a composer. My brother in music and life. I wrote ‘Ever Yours’, primarily, as a conversation about music, Haydn, friendship, life, and death, between Geoff and me. Geoff is now gone…But the idea of a conversation between friends continues to live in this new version of the work.”
— Osvaldo Golijov on “Ever Yours”
“Ever Yours is a single, sustained meditation that feels both grounded in tradition and fully alive in the present.” San Francisco Classical Voice
Osvaldo Golijov (Photo: Eric Cheng)
OSVALDO GOLIJOV
Osvaldo Golijov grew up in an Eastern European Jewish household in La Plata, Argentina. Born to a piano teacher mother and physician father, Golijov was raised surrounded by classical chamber music, Jewish liturgical and klezmer music, and the new tango of Astor Piazzolla. His blending of genres and seamless integration of voices speak volumes about his approach and style, a musical language that can only be termed “Golijovian.”
Since the early 1990s, Golijov has enjoyed collaborations with some of the world’s leading chamber music ensembles such as the Kronos Quartet, the St. Lawrence String Quartet and the Silkroad Ensemble; in addition to relationships with artists such as Yo-Yo Ma, Dawn Upshaw, and Robert Spano; and orchestras including the Atlanta, Boston, and Chicago symphony orchestras. In 2000, the premiere of Golijov’s La Pasión según San Marcos (St. Mark Passion) took the music world by storm. The Boston Globe called it “the first indisputably great composition of the 21st century.” Golijov has also received acclaim for groundbreaking works such as his opera Ainadamar, the clarinet quintet The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind, and the song cycle Falling Out of Time, based on the novel by David Grossman. Reviewing the recording by the Silkroad Ensemble on In a Circle Records, The Guardian called Falling Out of Time “a Kindertotenlieder for our fragile present.”
Golijov has composed music for a number of Francis Ford Coppola’s films,including Youth Without Youth, Tetro, Twixt and Megalopolis. Other recent works include The Given Note, a violin concerto for soloist Johnny Gandelsman and The Knights; LAIKA for countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, which premiered with The Met Orchestra Chamber Ensemble at Carnegie Hall; Ever Yours for string octet, premiered by St. Lawrence String Quartet and Telegraph Quartet; and Um Día Bom for string quartet Brooklyn Rider, available on In a Circle Records.
Golijov served as the Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall during the 2012–13 season. He is Composer-In-Residence at the Prior Performing Arts Center at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, where he taught from 1991 until 2022.
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Daniel Rowland, Violin
Floor Le Coultre, Violin
Dana Zemtsov, Viola
Maja Bogdanovic, Cello
The Arethusa Quartet was founded in 2023 and unifies four exciting, internationally renowned musicians with backgrounds both as soloists and in world-famous chamber groups. Having shared the stage in numerous festivals, the members developed a deep friendship, bonded over their complementary passions and ideals, and decided to create this dynamic and unique group whose mesmerizing intensity derives from always being “in the moment” while playing music.
The Quartet takes its name from the mythical, magical water nymph Arethusa—the beautiful subject of composer Karol Szymanowski’s The Fountain of Arethusa, who is desired by all kinds of gods and demigods. One of these demigods, Alpheus, sees her in the water and tries to catch her. The moment he thinks he has caught her, she turns into the water itself and becomes one with nature. She is unreachable by the hands of the demigod. This vaporous concept of longing can also be applied to art, and to music in particular. It is beautifully unreachable. It is impossible to grasp. And if you think, “Now I have it!” it is already gone.
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Tim Brackman, Violin
Inga Våga Gaustad, Violin
Elisa Karen Tavenier, Viola
Pieter de Koe, Cello
Regarded as the most promising young string quartet in the Netherlands, the Animato Quartet is known for its passionate, spontaneous playing and powerful on-stage presence. Founded in 2013, its programs combine both classical pieces drawn from the string quartet repertoire and contemporary compositions.
In January 2025, Animato won first prize at the international Irene Steels-Wilsing Foundation Competition and was invited to return to the 2026 Heidelberger Frühling Festival. In 2023, the Kersjes Prize—the most important state prize for classical chamber music talent—was awarded to the Quartet. That same year, they collaborated with violist Nils Mönkemeyer in Kammermusikpreis Hasselburg in Germany, where they received first prize and the audience prize. In 2022, at the Ninth International Joseph Joachim Chamber Music Competition in Weimar, the Quartet received the special prize for an exceptionally talented ensemble. They were also invited to participate in the prominent Verbier Festival Academy 2022 and were selected as one of only ten quartets to compete in the prestigious Banff International String Quartet Competition that year. In September 2021, they won both third prize and a special jury prize at Trondheim’s famed International Chamber Music Competition.
Within the Netherlands, Animato has performed at all major venues and at festivals such as the Utrecht International Chamber Music Festival, the Stift Music festival, and the String Quartet Biennale Amsterdam. Internationally they have given concerts at venues including the Philharmonie de Paris, the Philharmonie Luxembourg, the chamber music series of the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, and festivals across Portugal, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, and France.
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Violinist and violist Barry Shiffman has a rich and varied career as a performer, recording artist, teacher, and administrator. He made his debut with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at the age of 15. In 1989, Shiffman co-founded the St. Lawrence String Quartet. During his 17 years with the Quartet, he appeared in over 2,000 concerts in venues around the globe and recorded several critically acclaimed albums under an exclusive contract with EMI Classics.
Since the fall of 2010, Shiffman has been at The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, as both Associate Dean and Director of Chamber Music at The Glenn Gould School and Director of The Taylor Academy. At The Banff Centre, he is Director of the Banff International String Quartet Competition and Festival. He has also previously served as Director of Music Programs and Artistic Director of Summer Classical Programs at Banff. Since 2017, he has been Artistic Director of Rockport Music, directing the summer chamber music festival and other classical programming at the Shalin Liu Performance Center in Rockport Massachusetts.
Shiffman is the recipient of the Nadia Boulanger Prize for Excellence in the Art of Teaching, awarded by the Longy School of Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has also received an honorary doctorate from the University of Calgary. His formal studies were at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto, University of Toronto, Utrecht Conservatory, Hartt School of Music, Juilliard School, and Yale University.
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Born in Boston, double bassist Nicholas Schwartz began his studies at Boston University. His teachers included Edwin Barker and Matthew McDonald. He has worked regularly as a substitute with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops Orchestra. During the 2012–13 season, he took part in the Berlin Philharmonic Herbert von Karajan Academy. Since August 2013, he has been a member of the Netherlands’ Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.
Schwartz has won various prizes, including first prize at the International Society of Bassists and the Stulberg International String Competition. He has spent many summers playing in the Verbier Festival Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra, and also performs with pianist Anna Fedorova as the Oyster Duo.
