2006 Journal Archive

December 3, 2006

One of the many benefits of our growing strings program at Morningside College is getting to show off our many talented students.  This weekend, we hit the road with Morningside's Camerata, the side-by-side, conductorless, student+faculty chamber orchestra led by the four of us.  It was a short tour, but nonetheless we hope it was a good experience for our students.

One of the many downsides of touring is all the time spent waiting.  But the waiting gave us time to get to know our students better.  (And for them to get to know us better, too!)  ...and to have a little fun with the camera...

Jamie's alter-ego is, apparently, quite dramatic, as we've captured in these photos with one of his Morningside College students.  (N.B. - This is NOT quite his usual teaching style!)

There was also time for Jamie and Jacob to practice their special arrangement of the Mendelssohn concerto, for violin four-hands.

It still needs a little more practice, so don't look for it any time soon in your local concert hall...

November 9, 2006

The last several days have been a time to focus on our educational programs, and on the community aspects of our residency in Sioux City, Iowa.  We've come to expect that a string quartet residency like our current one, far from the cultural capitals of the world, will involve quite a few skills that we didn't learn in the conservatory.  So it shouldn't be a surprise when we found ourselves one day building a giant TV set.  This one has no plasma, no pixels, and not even a cathode ray tube, but it's the biggest that's ever been in any of our homes!

In fact, it's the latest addition to our educational programs -- in this case, a presentation for elementary-school students, to introduce them to string instruments.  It's also a giant prop, designed to get little minds (with big imaginations) whirring about all the possibilities that string instruments hold.

Just two days ago, our handiwork debuted at the first of many visits we'll make to the schools of Sioux City this school year.  It's always a great reward for us to see how enthusiastic and excited these young kids get when we play for them, and to know that we're playing a major part in the revival of strings in that town.

October 26, 2006

How could we pay tribute to poetry without that all-time favorite, the limerick?!  Here is what we hope will be our final installment on the topic:

Photo by Jennifer Joseph Perry

When traveling to a new place,
We need coffee to keep a smile on each face.

After a long hiatus, the Journal is back! A few very busy months, with lots of performances and big projects, kept our collective powers of journal-ing out of sight. Lots to share, and lots to catch up on, so here it is, summarized in verse:

Northern Michigan, on the beach

with sand and shovels and pales,

Jacob hogs the camera's reach,

to show off muscles built practicing scales.

Good to know that Jacob's not

the only ham in sight.

Luis and Jamie found these toys

and jammed away all night.

Tan, relaxed, and fed real well,

this foursome in "Fishtown" is feelin' swell!

Photo by Jennifer Joseph Perry

Photo shoot gone wrong.

Rain from a hose is just fine,

but please aim higher.

No pictures for the following tales,

blame it on a camera that sometimes fails...

Little Rock, in Arkansas,

showed us Southern hospitality.

It was a favorite concert stop of ours,

and Amy's old locality.

By the bay, in Baltimore,

to meet and greet presenters,

they're bound to think we're great performers

as well as music mentors.

We know we've built these poems in a structure very loosely;

to everyone who's bothered, we apologize profusely!

June 29, 2006

Torture comes in many ways.  Some are more dangerous than others, but our far-too-short trip to Colorado certainly felt like some kind of torture!  Being in Aspen for a concert at the music festival (including the world premiere of an octet with our friends, the Degas Quartet) meant that rehearsal took priority over hiking, biking, shopping, dining, strolling, carousing, gazing, relaxing, and all the other things that make the mountains so much fun.  It reminded us of the old Alcatraz prison, where the cells for the worst inmates had a gorgeous view to the city of San Francisco -- a constant reminder of the joys they were separated from.

But hard work payed off in a concert with multiple standing ovations!  We even got some wonderful praise from some performer heroes of ours.  (Where else but in Aspen is the audience likely to include world-famous musicians, heads of major corporations, and savvy world travelers?!)  With the concert done, we finally had a little time the next day to enjoy ourselves, before heading home and getting back to work. 

At the top of Independence Pass, the sky is endless, the mountains are majestic, and people are tiny little dots in the center of photos.

Many thanks to the generous and fascinating hosts who made our stay in Aspen so comfortable!

May 31, 2006

* WARNING: Today's journal entry contains horrible puns and awful jokes; reader discretion is advised. *

Today we made another stop on our unofficial concert tour of government facilities (the "Bach and Bureaucracy Tour").  We followed up a successful stop at the State Department (see March 12) with today's performance at the Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Labs.  Geniuses and general public alike joined us for a noon-time concert that felt especially "electric," as if music was effortlessly "radiating" out of our instruments -- thanks, no doubt, to the warm welcome we received from the concert organizers and audience!

The next stop on this "tour" is currently available.  Surely there's a government facility in the Virgin Islands that wants to invite us for next January!

April 15, 2006

Our quartet family keeps growing and growing!  Yesterday we gathered together to welcome another spouse into the fold, when Jamie walked down the aisle with the woman now known as Candace Cooper.

A small but elegant ceremony and reception were made all the more lovely by the presence of Jamie's parents and grandparents, who flew over from England just for the ceremony.

We wish the happy couple great joy and success together!

April 3, 2006

It ain't quite Broadway yet, but last weekend we caught a glimpse of what it will look like when we do finally get our one-quartet show in Times Square...

We saw this glimpse of the future thanks to a concert for the inaugural Plowman Chamber Music Competition.  All we can say is it was a great relief to be there as performers, not as competitors! 

But no matter how stressful an event may be, we think there's always time to strike a pose!

(It seems like we've seen that pose somewhere before...)

March 30, 2006

A busy few days of preparations led up to the second preview performance of the new octet, by our friend Armando Bayolo.  This time, we hosted the Degas Quartet in Sioux City.

Our collaboration included stops at a high school (in the picture above) and the hispanic cultural center, and culminated in a performance of the new work.  We were thrilled afterwards to find out, just like at the other preview, that the audience loved the new piece.  We'll meet up with the Degas again in June, when we prepare the octet for its official world premiere, at the Aspen Music Festival.

March 26, 2005

Much of our time is focused on preparing our own performances, but the past few weeks found us working hard to help student groups polish their performances.  First was our annual Intensive Chamber Music Seminar at Morningside College, where we hosted six talented young chamber groups, performing some really challenging repertoire -- Beethoven's "Ghost" piano trio, Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" string quartet, and even Astor Piazolla's "Four for Tango."

The very next weekend we found ourselves at Skidmore College, again working with some very talented young chamber musicians.  This time, a candid-camera-phone caught Amy hard at work with one of the groups in the masterclass there.

March 12, 2006

Traveling is full of surprises.  However, (to borrow from government logic for a moment) there are the surprises you know to expect, and the surprises that surprise you.  Delayed flights, lost bags, and getting lost in a strange town are all par for the course.  But our most recent trip, over the past two weeks, was full of surprising surprises.

The exceptionally warm welcome we felt from the people of Hickory, North Carolina, was the first true surprise.  But the icing on the cake was the lavish accommodations that were arranged for us.  Jacob had an entire 2-story pool house at his disposal, surrounded by park-like gardens and flocks of songbirds.  The others had similarly fine arrangements.  If only every hotel were like this!

We were in Hickory to prepare the first preview performance of a new double quartet.  We had planned on a marathon series of rehearsals with the Degas Quartet, and the week certainly didn't let us down.  With a Puerto Rican composer (Armando) and Venezuelan violist (Luis), we made a special effort to involve the hispanic community through a visit to Central Latino.  Luis and Armando spoke in Spanish and English about their experiences in classical music.  Luis, as usual, was surrounded by fans afterward.

It also surprised us just how small an SUV can feel when packed with a string quartet and two weeks of supplies.  There was barely room to breathe...

Our performance at the State Department proved that you can't count on the kind of surprises you'd hope for.  We kept looking for Condoleeza to show up in the audience.  I guess she had more urgent matters to attend to than receiving the delegation from Iowa.  But we did get a nice photo with the front of the builiding...

But the biggest of the "surprise" surprises was the red carpet that Rali Patcheva and Vasily Popov rolled out for us in DC.  These two married musicians were strangers to most of us before we arrived, but were a tremendous help in setting up our visit, and went to great lengths to assist us while we were there.  They have become some of the greatest friends of the quartet we have in the East, and we thank them with the greatest affection.

February 24, 2006

Our most recent trip, to Saratoga Springs, New York, was a special homecoming for Amy, our cellist.  It was her first performance in her home town since high school, and her first chance to bring the quartet along.  Performing with the quartet in the same hall where she did her very first cello recital, and for a packed hall sprinkled with family and friends, made it a very special night for her.

It was also a special concert because we had the honor of collaborating with Amy's father in a performance of the Schumann piano quintet.  Working with such an intelligent and sensitive musician meant that we barely noticed how limited (just a few hours) our rehearsal time with him was.  The picture shows the quartet with Amy's father, and the honorary page turner (the small one in white fur).

Because this trip was the first of a two-part visiting residency at Skidmore College, we had the chance yesterday afternoon to work with some of their student chamber groups.  We look forward to hearing the same groups next month, and to hear the progress they've made on Dotzauer, Eisler, Shostakovich, and Mendelssohn.

February 4, 2006

While our time away from home focuses mainly on performances, the time we spend at home in Iowa is a chance to practice our juggling. No, we're not developing a new kind of encore — we juggle the many different activities that are a part of our residency in Sioux City. We've been planning, scheduling, and making quite a few visits to the local public schools — we'll make about sixty before the school year is over. We've been working to get a new summer camp started this June, including everything from advertising to meals to budgets — in addition to continuing the very successful weekend chamber music seminar we've held every March for three years now. Meanwhile, we've been teaching the many students we see every week, from age 4 up through college, and coaching local chamber groups. Only by carefully protecting our mornings are we able to find time to rehearse as a quartet, to prepare for the stretch of concerts we have coming up. And occasionally, for a few minutes every week, we find time to live life as regular people, and watch a movie or an episode of The Apprentice.

January 6, 2006

We just returned from a rare break from quartet, in which we all got to live our "other lives."  We got to rediscover what people do when they don't try to eat, drink, and dream in perfect four-part synchronization...

Amy and her husband (soon-to-be famous jazz guitarist, and our resident rock-meister) enjoyed the comforts of staying at home and locking themselves in for a week.  Their baby, Horace (the dog), even got into the holiday spirit with a festive red and green outfit.

Jacob used the time off to visit family out on the farm in Kansas.  His immediate family of 5 joined 2 grandparents, 4 aunts and uncles, 6 cousins plus husbands-and-wives, and even 4 cousins once-removed.  Maybe not the biggest family gathering ever organized, but enough probably to double the population of the town, temporarily.  Ever one to fit in, of course he went by the old adage: "When in Kansas, dress as the Kansans do."

Luis and Jamie both traveled home, to Venezuela and England respectively.  We know that Luis planned to get married for a second time while he was down there.  (To the same woman as the first time, fortunately!  They had a second ceremony in Venezuela for Luis's family.)

We each had a fabulous and well-deserved vacation, and hope we're ready now, to take on all the traveling and performing ahead of us in the next few months!

2006 Journal Archive