Celebrating with our friend, Julie
We were honored to be a part of the University of Delaware's Music Department Faculty Gala Concert on September 13th, and delighted to be starting our 5th year as Quartet-in-Residence at UD (more details on all our activities there to come very soon). But this concert was extra special, as it was a celebration of a wonderful pianist on faculty there, Julie Nishimura, who has been at UD for 25 years now. She put together performances with a variety of faculty artists, and SSQ got to play the opening movement of the glorious Schumann Piano Quintet to finish the first half. Luckily for us, we'll get to play the entire work with Julie at our Fall UD Concert, Friday, November 7th at 8PM (in the Center for the Arts, Gore Recital Hall)
We've also gotten a jump start with the fabulous UD chamber music students, having had our first master class with them this past week. Lots of great rep and wonderful musicians - it's going to be a good year.
Some new outreach
In collaboration with the Music School of Delaware and UD, we are now offering chamber music coaching and performances at the Archmere Academy in Wilmington, Delaware. Archmere is a wonderful preparatory school with devoted teachers and bright, driven students. There is a small group of fine string players, and we'll be working with them in chamber music coachings this year. After presenting a short concert to the entire student body a couple of weeks ago (they were an amazing audience!), we had our first meeting with the string students last week, and look forward to a fun and fruitful relationship.
 |
| We made a fun group effort out of reading an early Schubert quartet last Thursday. |
Getting intimate in Philadelphia
Bet that got your attention! We were delighted to play at Philadelphia's World Cafe Live again, on September 14th. We had been at WCL for last year's CD Release and Season Launch party, and loved the venue and the people there. So, we decided to have a special kind of collage concert this time, centering around the ideas and emotions put forth so viscerally in Leos Janacek's second String Quartet, titled "Intimate Letters". In addition to the Janacek, we also played music by Mozart, Haydn, Grieg, and Andrew Norman, and were joined by a fantastic poet and reader, Craig Franson, who shared poetry by Coleridge and Shelley. It was a great deal of fun, and a nice way to launch into some repertoire that we will be taking around a lot this season.
 |
| Twas a beautiful sunny day in Philly for our concert - Larry had to work hard to not get distracted by all the joggers and cyclists going by the WCL window during the performance! |
Sipping and savoring
Coming up tomorrow night is the first performance in a series we are very excited about, called Sip and Savor. This is a 3-part series in the intimate setting of Kennett Flash in Kennett Square, PA, where we will be delving into three major works, picking them apart a little and putting them in some musical and historical context (that's the sipping), and then performing the entire work (we hope you'll savor that part). Up first, tomorrow: the beautiful and ground-breaking String Quartet in g minor by Claude Debussy. Hope to see you there! (Wednesday, September 24, 7:30 PM)
More to come, for sure, but we thought we'd just let you know how thrilling a start to the new season we've already had!
No comments:
Post a Comment