Elvis Costello's remarkable and ground-breaking collaboration with the Brodsky Quartet is performed by the string quartet OXUS, known for their innovative programming, with jazz singer and musician Pam Pecko Smith.   The starting point for The Juliet Letters goes back to the 1930s when the guardian of Juliet's Tomb in Verona started replying to letters which were left at the graveside. This weird phenomenon grew as more people heard about it and now thousands of letters to perhaps the world's most famous, but dead and fictional, lover arrive every year and a team of voluntary secretaries reads, translates, answers and archives them.  There is even an annual prize for the most beautiful letters.   Costello and the Brodskys allowed their imagination to run riot with the idea, writing new imaginary letters to an imaginary person.  The music is in a wide variety of styles and brings together musical ideas from very different backgrounds and genres, resulting in a stream of surprises.  The compositional methods were many and varied, with all five performers contributing both words and music, including some spontaneous group composition.   OXUS and Pam Pecko Smith collaborate to bring you a dramatic and extraordinary evening quite unlike anything you've heard before, guaranteed to send you home pondering the nature of love letters, chain letters, begging letters, vitriolic letters and even junk mail.

~text by Spike Wilson