November 28 , 2005

As promised (with all apologies to those who've been holding their breath for this!), here is a picture from Luis and Martha's wedding.

The photo is of their first dance, to a Venezuelan song by Ilan Chester.  (For once, the musicians get to dance!)

(Photo by Thomas Van Straaten.)

November 20 , 2005

For a while, there wasn't much to add here.  Rehearsals for the second round of "EQ versus The Microphones" (aka, the recording session) took up most of our time as a quartet.  But last weekend we took to the ring with Kauder's first quartet, and got down more than a handful of takes.  We returned to the same church (way out in the countryside, near Iowa City) with the same recording engineer (our new best friend, Peter Nothnagle).  [see August 15]   But in November, temperatures are a bit colder than in August!  The church has great acoustics, but it does not have state-of-the-art heating.  In fact, it's quite old-fashioned, and noisy.  Which means we went without heat whenever the tape was rolling.

In fact, something as small as a bug can cause big problems getting a clean recording.  Apparently, the church was also in use as a haven for dying insects.  Dying, buzzing insects.  As Peter showed us, sometimes being a recording engineer means hunting down the little buzzes and squeaks...

While we were in Iowa City, we took the opportunity to stop by the local public radio station (KSUI) to be a part of their series, "Know the Score."

The interview won't air until our CD is released, but we had a great time chatting with host Nancy Hagen.  Check back here (on the Calendar) in a few months to find out when the interview will air.

October 4, 2005

Help us in welcoming the newest member of the quartet family, flutist Martha Councell Vargas, who married our violist, Luis Vargas, on October 1 just outside of Chicago.  (Does this make her our flute-in-law?)   We were all thrilled to be on hand as one of our own walked down the aisle.  It was a beautiful and touching ceremony, and we promise to put at least one picture up here, as soon as we can get our hands on them.

September 28, 2005

Time for a quick update on last month's broken parts:

Luis sent his broken "unbreakable" bow back to the maker, and it was replaced free of charge within a few weeks!

Not such a quick fix for Jacob, though!  (He wasn't interested in sending his foot back to its maker...)  After two weeks on crutches, another week walking only while wearing a special boot, and then several weeks of limping along, he is getting back to doing a good impersonation of how a normal person walks.  During all that time he managed to learn many skills for coping with one-footed-ness (walking, showering, driving, and even putting on pants), and he hopes he won't ever need to use those skills again!

August 22, 2005

The latest edition of our newsletter is out.  If you didn't receive it, you can check it out here:

Euclidian Newsletter No. 2, Summer 2005

August 15, 2005

Our long stay in upstate New York was through, but before we could go back home we had to make a stop in Iowa City for three days of recording.  What should have been a long, but uneventful, weekend turned out to be a "smashing" success in several ways.

We arrived in Iowa City with two free days for rehearsal before diving into the recording process.  The accommodations were first-rate, because of some generous and wonderful friends who let us stay in their homes while they were away on vacation.  This time should have been great for relaxing, and focusing on the upcoming project.  But on the day before recording began, Luis managed to break the tip off of an "unbreakable" carbon-fiber bow!  (The first "smashing" success.)

Somehow, either a tiny fracture must have developed, or the bow had some defect that finally gave out, and the tip popped off while he was doing his morning scales.  (Coffee, eggs, scales, and shower: this is a musician's wake-up routine...)  He handled the ordeal very well, and fortunately Luis had a small collection of bows with him, so carrying on with the recording was not as tough as it might have been.

We did the recording in an unused country church outside of Iowa City.  It's about a mile off of any paved road, so there are almost no "extra" noises that could ruin an otherwise great take.  And it's a beautiful building with beautiful acoustics.  The first two days of recording were long days by most standards, but went very well.  But of course it couldn't end so easily.

The night before our third and final day of recording, Jacob was on an innocent trip to the store for some bedtime snacks.  In a day, the average person must take thousands of steps.  In a liftetime, zillions.  But Jacob's foot decided that on one particular step on the way to the store, the ankle would give out, and make a little excitement by breaking a foot bone.  (The second "smashing" success.)  Fortunately, on a Saturday night, the nearest ER was almost empty, so Jacob got in and out with enough time, and enough pain killers, to get a good night's sleep for the final day of recording.  In the picture below, you can see the big blue boot that Jacob will be wearing for the next several weeks.  (Really, really careful observers may also notice that Luis is using the "backup" bow...)

The end result, after these smashes, was a recording that we think we'll be proud of.  Peter Nothnagle, the recording engineer, made the whole process very easy for us.  Being in a quartet means getting the same four perspectives day-in and day-out.  So having an impartial fifth "member" for a few days was a nice change of pace.  Our plan was to record one complete quartet each day, and at the end of three days, we'd have three down.  So that meant each day lasted until we had every note of the day's piece exactly how we wanted it.  Peter had tremendous patience as our obsessive quartet personality had us recording some spots five, ten, even fifteen times until everyone was sure we had it just right.

Now, we all head our separate ways for some much-deserved time off!

(Thanks to Peter Nothnagle for the pictures of the recording process.)

August 7, 2005

The quartet's summer in up-state New York just drew to a close. Our six weeks there were packed with lots of great kids, whom we got to guide through some of the greatest music there is (chamber music, of course!). We also rehearsed together every available hour, to prepare for our recording session at the end of the summer in Iowa City.

The summer festival is at Hartwick College, which is on the side of a very big hill in Oneonta, New York. We got lots of exercise, and strong legs, trekking across the campus, up and down the hill, and counting the hundreds of stair-steps from the bottom of the hill to the top.

It's a good thing we got so much exercise just getting around. One of the specialties in Oneonta is a slice of cheese pizza "with cold cheese." It's a regular slice of pizza, but with mounds of extra cheese piled on top. Not low-cal. Not low-carb. Not a part of anyone's weight-loss diet!

Certainly, the best part of our summer at Hartwick was meeting so many great new people. The students were terrific, and the other faculty members were wonderful!

We wrapped up our summer with birthday parties for Jamie and Luis. With birthdays just two days apart, they always have to share the spotlight in August! We managed to catch Jamie in the act of blowing out his candles... Bonus points for anyone who can figure out how old he is!

June 19 , 2005

We just got back home from a quick trip to New Haven for a performance at Yale University's Sprague Hall.  The Hugo Kauder Society invited us back to their second annual competition, to perform as past winners.  (Fortunately, we weren't competing this time -- so it was much less stressful!)

We had a great time meeting Pamela Frank, famous violin soloist and one of the judges for this year's competition.

The Kauder Society arranged for us to stay in university housing -- which brought out a few flashbacks to our college dorm days.  But Amy had the most exciting experience of all of us: an unmarked door that looked like it led to a closet turned out to be an alarmed fire door!  I'm sure the neighbors didn't like us very much that night, but we did get to meet a nice member of Yale's late night security force, who came to turn off the alarm.

Of course, we didn't let all the excitement stop us from taking full advantage of everything that Yale had to offer...

March 13 , 2005

Four days, six groups, and 30 coaching sessions, all culminating in one great concert, made up the second year of our Intensive Chamber Music Seminar at Morningside College.  Individual students and pre-formed groups from high schools across the region joined us on the campus of Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa, to live, breathe, eat, and dream about chamber music.

Teaming up with Joe Shufro and Jim March - our colleagues from the college - we each took on one student group, and worked intensely throughout the long weekend.  Some groups were very experienced, and by the end of the weekend were making music at a very high level.  But it was also rewarding to work with others who were getting their first taste of string quartets.  They came a long way in just a few days!

Anyone who's been put in the position will know right away why the toughest part of the weekend for some groups was coming up with a name.  So we congratulate the members of the Aria and "Beethother" string quartets, Quartetto Con Brio, Trio Genecira, Quartetto Del Fuego, and the group simply known as "Wolfgang" - for finding a name, as well as giving a great performance today.

This project is among the most important - and enjoyable - things we do as a quartet.  We hope that everyone else involved had as much fun as we did.

January 13 , 2005

We made some new friends at Leeds School in Sioux City, Iowa.  Through a special arrangement with the community school district, we were able to follow up an in-school performance by bringing several arm-loads of instruments into the third-grade classrooms, and giving each of the students the chance to try a violin for the first time.

In this photo, you can see Jamie and Luis working to perfect the bowholds of some future Heifetzes.  (Thanks to Mrs. Koop for the picture!)   By the end of our second visit, these students were ready to perform a real duet with Jamie in front of their classmates.

Some of the kids we've met through this program show real promise as young musicians, and we're glad to know that many have gone on to study a stringed instrument!