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Last year, one of everybody's favourite videos on A Musical Advent was Margit van der Zwan's musical saw rendition of O Holy Night!
Clitheroe-based artist and musician Margit - a cellist and singer as well - taught herself the musical saw during lockdown. Margit illustrates children's books, and creates distinctive art prints of composers - those of you who purchased A Musical Advent last year will recognise her Handel illustration from the Messiah videos!
Margit also illustrates bespoke portraits of pets & people , and has now launched a super fun new card game she has designed & devised, which she generously donated as part of our Prize Draw bundle, along with one of her giclee art prints of Handel:
"Quartet is a new card game featuring composers: not just dead white men but also women and people of colour!
For several years I’ve been making portraits of composers, selling them as prints via an online shop. I studied art at Central St Martins but also work as a cellist. Music is very dear to my heart and so is art. I love combining the two!
In April 2021 I decided it would be fun to give my collection of composer portraits a new lease of life and created Quartet. It was a huge learning curve, but thanks to a successful fundraiser campaign on Kickstarter, the game soon had lift-off! It would not have been possible without the support of friends making pledges and giving liberal advice about how to go about launching a new card game, and for this I am extremely grateful.
Watching the game’s popularity grow is very exciting. An ever increasing number of shops and publishers are now taking on Quartet.
One of the best things is the feedback: parents enjoy hearing their kids (trying to) pronounce composer names Rachmaninov… Shostakovich… Children giggle at the forfeits and game variations, toddlers enjoy the brightly coloured cards, teachers are using the game for their music lessons, and everyone is discovering new composers.
And isn't it about time that names like Dorothy Ashby, Fanny Mendelssohn and Kassia became a bit more mainstream?
Find out more about the game here:
@QuartetGames
