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The first single arrives November 6, ahead of the album’s worldwide release on December 11, 2026.
Irreverence Group Music [IGM], in collaboration with Kahlo Quartet, announces After Beauty — The Complete String Quartets, Op. 7, bringing together two works by Colombian composer Julián De La Chica, nearly a decade after the premiere of his first quartet at Carnegie Hall in 2016.
● Read More: Lavinia Meijer’s FADO by Julián De La Chica Featured on Spotify’s New Classical
Composed in 2015 and 2017, Hypnagogia and After Beauty share an unconventional approach to string writing. Extreme slowness, fragile harmonies, minimal vibrato, and extended silences create a musical language in which restraint becomes as important as expression.
The music asks for stillness rather than display, for silence to carry part of the meaning.
— Thomas May
The collaboration began in December 2024, during the world premiere of De La Chica’s song cycle Canciones de la Muerte, Op. 20, at St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery in New York. Mezzo-soprano Rosario Armas performed the work with the WSMF Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Ahmed Alom. Among the musicians was violinist Manuela Romero, who later introduced De La Chica to Kahlo Quartet. That encounter eventually led to the recording sessions at Firehouse12 in New Haven in May 2025.
Kahlo Quartet
Photo by Julián De La Chica
From After Beauty to PIRET
The first glimpse of the recording comes on November 6 with Cycle V, the final movement of Hypnagogia. The music has already found another life in De La Chica’s 16mm film PIRET, which received Best International Fiction Short Film at the Lebanese Independent Film Festival, Best Short Film at New Cinema Amsterdam, and two IndieFEST Awards of Recognition for acting and sound.
The album also includes Summa, a work for string quartet and synthesizer inspired by Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, with De La Chica joining Kahlo Quartet on synthesizer.
After Beauty will be released December 11, 2026, through Irreverence Group Music, with liner notes by Thomas May.
First single: November 6, 2026
Full album: December 11, 2026