Three string quartets at different stages of their careers talk creativity, collaboration, and the changing world of music.
DIOR QUARTET
The Dior Quartet – Noa Sarid and Tobias Elser (violin), Caleb Georges (viola), and Joanne Yesol Choi (cello) – formed in Fall 2018 at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Within eight months of their formation, the Dior Quartet won the Bronze Medal at the 46th Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and the First Prize at the 9th Plowman Chamber Music Competition (Senior Strings). They’re graduating from the JSoM this year (congratulations!) and will be starting this fall as the Fellowship Quartet-in-residence at the Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory in Toronto.
Project Jumpstart: In a few sentences, could you tell us a bit about how your quartet formed?
Dior Quartet: Our quartet was formed in Fall 2018 with the help of our mentors, the Pacifica Quartet. We were looking for members with the intent of creating a serious string quartet, and we met through some matchmaking and trial runs as well! Our violist Caleb joined us in March 2020.
PJ: In the few years since your quartet has formed, you’ve had much competition and performance success. What do you think has been a crucial element for your quartet to thrive?
DQ: One of the most crucial elements is that we all have the determination and the drive for the same goal, and all of us are willing to put in the time and effort to reach those goals. We are also very organized with our preparation and planning which has been very helpful as we start ahead of time and adjust our workload, so it is always manageable. Most importantly, we strive for progress instead of perfection.
PJ: The world seems to be changing rapidly on so many levels. How have you positioned your ensemble to innovate through these times?
DQ: We are glad that the world of chamber music has begun to evolve in various mediums in recent years. The pandemic has pushed musicians to find new and creative ways to reach audiences, since performing in a hall was no longer a safe option. In the past year, we performed in streamed concerts and competitions, some live and others pre-recorded. In this format, we most enjoyed the direct communication with our listeners through live chat and comments. The immediate feedback during a concert, in comparison to one at the end of it, allowed us a more direct understanding of what resonates with our listeners which creates an active dialogue between us.
We also experimented with streaming a live concert from our apartment on the platform Twitch. We played a range of classical to contemporary repertoire to the online followers of our cellist, Joanne—most of them non-musicians. It was incredible to see how much they enjoy a classical piece like Haydn and was interesting to see what they paid attention to. Another much-needed evolution in the classical music community is the awareness and demand for new music that spotlights diverse stories from different backgrounds. For us, this is an extremely important part of our mission in building our repertoire. We start by drawing inspiration from the music of our native cultures—Mediterranean, Korean, Caribbean, and American music.
PJ: What projects are you excited about for the future?
DQ: We have a variety of projects that we are excited to work towards in the months and years to come. One project we have been thinking about is a collaboration with animators to create a digital concert set to a short animated movie. We are also hoping to start an education program aimed at beginner and intermediate string students interested in chamber music. During the pandemic, we realized the power and advantages of virtual concerts in reaching broader audiences, and we plan to continue streaming concerts in the future in a variety of online platforms.
Visit the Dior Quartet’s Facebook / Instagram / YouTube!
VERONA QUARTET
Delicate craftsmanship, luminous sound and a dramatic poise are all hallmarks of the virtuosity that fuses together violinists Jonathan Ong, Dorothy Ro, violist Abigail Rojansky and cellist Jonathan Dormand to create the Verona Quartet. The group’s singular sense of purpose earned them Chamber Music America’s coveted Cleveland Quartet Award in 2020, and a reputation as an “outstanding ensemble…cohesive yet full of temperament.” (The New York Times) Deeply committed educators, the Verona Quartet serves as Quartet-in-Residence at the Oberlin College and Conservatory in Oberlin, Ohio.
PJ: Could you tell us a bit about how your quartet formed?
Verona Quartet: The quartet formed at the Jacobs School of Music in 2013. Jonathan, Abigail and former members Brendan Shea ‘14 and Warren Hagerty ‘15 were pursuing individual performance degrees at IU, and a shared love for chamber music brought the foursome together. Dorothy joined the quartet in 2014 – about a year into our formation – and JD became a member of the VQ in 2017.
The timing of our formation at IU could not have been more fortuitous. 2013 was also the year that the Pacifica Quartet came to IU to teach and, along with our dear mentors and teachers Atar Arad, Alex Kerr, Ik-Hwan Bae and Eric Kim, they took us under their wings and prepared us for the rigors and demands of a string quartet career. The entire administration and faculty at IU could not have been more supportive of our journey – those initial years of guidance and inspiration were instrumental in getting our career jumpstarted!
PJ: In the few years since the Verona Quartet graduated at IU, you’ve had a busy schedule of competition success, performance tours, teaching, and residencies! What are some of the things you’ve learned as a group during this time of activity and growth?
VQ: Many things have changed, adapted and developed so gradually over the past eight years that it is difficult to pinpoint any one lesson. As our schedule has grown busier and the demands on our time multiplied, we have developed a deep familiarity with the importance of not only time management but compartmentalizing our activities. It has become increasingly important for our sustainability as an ensemble to maintain a structured schedule that protects our ability to find balance between work and our personal lives. We have also found that our music-making only thrives when our interpersonal relationships are also strong. We approach the social aspect of being in a string quartet as seriously as we do practicing and make sure to communicate openly, flexibly and respectfully. In an effort to structure healthy communication, we periodically schedule meetings dedicated to discussing the social environment of our rehearsals and work together so as to optimize what we do.
PJ: The world seems to be changing rapidly on so many levels. How have you positioned your ensemble to innovate through these times?
VQ: Every generation of musician will face new challenges as the world and nature of the music profession evolves. In the VQ we believe that the passion and love for the music we play is always our guiding light; performing the music that we love and feel passionate about.
We find ourselves programming works that might be more reflective of the world around us, but performing Beethoven and other music in the core of the string quartet repertoire still remains central to our mission. We have been experimenting with concert length, reaching audiences that don’t easily get access to classical music (in unusual venues) as well as programming works that are under-celebrated but worthy of attention. Ultimately, we must find the balance between what our listeners want as well as presenting music that deserves recognition in ways that have value in the 21st century. Like chamber music, this is a subtle conversation and those nuances take careful consideration and open ears and minds, otherwise we may find ourselves getting stuck in the way things “have always been done”.
PJ: Any words of wisdom for younger quartets hoping to follow in your footsteps?
VQ: Transparency is key for a healthy quartet relationship! It’s so important to communicate with one another and to check in with one another on a regular basis. The quartet lifestyle is grueling, and it can be hard at times. When tension rises, one can feel isolated, misunderstood, or defensive, and those feelings can be toxic in a quartet setting, especially if they’re being kept inside and not shared out loud.
We make an effort to have regular check-ins with one another, just to touch base on anything that’s on anyone’s mind, and it is also understood that this is always a safe space where everyone can speak freely and truthfully. Confronting one another is a hard thing to do because it requires vulnerability, but not only do you gain courage from it, but you come out of it always feeling better!
Visit the Verona Quartet’s website / Facebook / Instagram!
PACIFICA QUARTET
Recognized for its virtuosity, exuberant performance style, and often daring repertory choices, over the past twenty-six years the Pacifica Quartet – Simin Ganatra and Austin Hartman (violin), Mark Holloway (viola), and Brandon Vamos (cello) – has achieved international recognition as one of the finest chamber ensembles performing today. Named the quartet-in-residence at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music in March 2012, the Pacifica was previously the quartet-in-residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and has received multiple Grammy Awards for Best Chamber Music Performance, including the recent 2021 GRAMMY for their album Contemporary Voices. In 2017, the Pacifica Quartet was appointed to lead the Center for Advanced Quartet Studies at the Aspen Music Festival and School.
PJ: Could you tell us a bit about how your quartet formed?
Pacifica Quartet: Our journey to quartet life was seemingly inevitable! From a young age, we were each drawn to the direct and immediate communicative power of chamber music. When you’re in a small group without a conductor, you have to make all the musical decisions, and that’s a great way to keep yourself engaged. Quartet playing became our greatest musical passion! In music school, one tends to meet and play with like-minded friends — reading music together, discovering repertoire, enjoying collaborating — and that’s how the seeds were planted for our quartet, in school. Some of the original quartet members were from Southern California, hence the name Pacifica, which would also work well in other languages!
PJ: Over the past 26 years as a quartet, you’ve built an international reputation as a leading chamber ensemble. How have you seen the field of classical music/quartet performance change over the years?
PQ: In the past few decades, the field of chamber music has blossomed like never before. Chamber music is generally defined as an ensemble of musicians where each musician plays a unique part, and there is no conductor. In the past, only a very small number of ensembles were lucky enough to make a living exclusively by playing concerts. These days, there is a rich and varied scene around this country and abroad that supports an enormous variety of groups sharing their music. And some groups, like our quartet, are fortunate to have a residency at a music school, where we can coach chamber music and teach our instruments, further passing along what we’ve learned. Residencies have allowed quartets in this country to flourish and explore and have the luxury of rehearsal time and the rich environment of a music school from which to draw inspiration. There are so many terrific (young!) quartets out there today, playing some of the greatest music that composers have written. While the great composers of the past wrote for ensembles such as string quartets, piano trios, and wind and brass quintets, composers today are also writing for more diverse ensembles. Chamber music societies have also become more common, with a large roster of musicians of all stripes so that they can program diverse works of different instrumentations. And the internet, with so many recordings, videos, and concerts available to stream, has made it so that no matter where you live, you can hear wonderful music-making right in your own living room.
PJ: The world seems to be changing rapidly on so many levels. How have you positioned your ensemble to innovate through these times?
PQ: Like many of our colleagues at the start of the pandemic, we were left stunned by the sudden shutdowns and cancellations. Concerts and festivals that had been planned years in advance were postponed or cancelled outright. As the picture became clearer after a few weeks, we started to figure out how we could safely rehearse and plan for an uncertain concert future. We bought some high-end microphones and recording equipment, learned about recording ourselves on audio and video, and found spaces where we could rehearse, teach, and perform in a distanced and safe way. We presented concerts live on the web, we recorded music ahead of time and streamed concerts afterwards, we recorded for the radio, and we made videos for social media where we shared the music we were making and the quartets we were playing. Pre-pandemic, I [Mark] would have thought it practically impossible to teach a lesson over the computer, but the technology (and our knowledge of how to use it!) grew so rapidly that in a month or two I felt like I could pretty effectively teach my students and coach my chamber groups. I learned to listen better, not just to my students over Zoom, but to my colleagues in the quartet, because we were sitting much farther apart than usual and synchronization and balancing the musical lines became more difficult. We also learned how to roll with the punches, and be more flexible. Although there were many challenging days of dark news in the world, we took inspiration from the strength of the human spirit and the optimism and hard work of our students.
In the world at large, people began to think more deeply about social justice and how we could help each other towards the goal of equality. This has touched the music world in some very positive ways. Music foundations, audiences, music schools, concert presenters, and musicians are all trying to shine a spotlight on diversity in music by performing music by underrepresented groups who have been unjustly ignored in the past, women and composers of color. It’s something we really welcome and are grateful to be exploring and performing new music and music that is new to us. We released a CD last summer that features three pieces written for us, all by Pulitzer Prize-winning women. Called Contemporary Voices, it won this year’s GRAMMY award for Best Chamber Music album, so it must have struck a chord at this moment.
PJ: What advice would you give to young chamber ensembles/string quartets just starting their professional careers?
PQ: Challenge yourselves! Take chances! It’s so important that you explore this great repertoire we have, and play an active part in expanding and diversifying it. Program music that you believe in, and that you want to share with others. Audiences love to hear musicians play music that they love to play and identify with personally. Take the time and energy to engage your audiences and connect with them by speaking from the stage before you play, giving them some background information or framing the program for them, so they might follow the narrative of the concert. Don’t miss this vital opportunity to connect and engage with them, especially now, when performances have been so limited and we’re incredibly hungry for live music.
Visit the Pacifica Quartet’s website / Facebook / Instagram!
A huge thank you to all three of these incredible quartets for sharing the experiences and wisdom they’ve gained during their inspirational career journeys!
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