What do you get when you mix a French violinist, a Canadian violinist, a Taiwanese violist, and a Japanese cellist? The answer is the Avalon String Quartet, Juilliard's current graduate quartet-in-residence.

The Avalon Quartet: Marie Wang, violin; Blaise Magnière, violin; Sumire Kudo, cello; Che-Yen Chen, viola. (Photo by Steve J. Sherman)

Known for their exciting performances of contemporary music, the Avalon will present two unfamiliar works at the annual Lisa Arnhold Memorial Concert on Tuesday, April 23 in Alice Tully Hall. The program, which will include traditional works by Haydn and Beethoven, will also feature R. Murray Schafer's Quartet No. 5 ("Rosalind") and the premiere of A Muse, a short work by David Macbride, which was commissioned for the ensemble by Concert Artists Guild.

The Schafer quartet has been a staple in the Avalon's concerts this season. Marie Wang, the group's second violinist, said that Schafer's music has always interested her because of its vast palette of tone colors. The composer's Fifth String Quartet is notable particularly for its use of crotales, which are small metal discs that can be either struck or bowed. "The colors he uses are very beautiful," Wang said. "He has the lower half [of the quartet] bow the C- and G-crotales while the violins play harmonics. It's very beautiful and shimmering."

The Avalon will only have about a month to prepare the new Macbride piece. Aside from this challenge, performing a premiere allows a unique opportunity to interact with the composer, said first violinist Blaise Magnière. "When we did a piece by Augusta Read Thomas, she really worked with us a lot and changed the piece a lot and asked for input from us. It's really wonderful to be involved in the creation process," he said.

The concert will open with Haydn's Quartet Op. 71, No. 1, which is, according to Magnière, "a great piece but not so often played." Next on the program will be the Schafer. Then, after intermission, the short Macbride work will precede Beethoven's heftier Quartet in C Major, Op. 59, No. 3 ("Razumovsky").

Now in its second year with its current members, the Avalon String Quartet (originally called the Katahdin Quartet, after a mountain in Maine) was formed in 1995 at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. At the time, Magnière and Wang were both students at the Cleveland Institute of Music. They organized the quartet along with a violist and cellist from the Institute, for their Norfolk audition. Wang said that after playing together for the summer, it was clear that this combination of players was worth keeping. "It was a lot of fun working together. We seemed to have the same kind of approach and ideals about how we wanted to make music."

The quartet changed its name to Avalon in 1996. "In Celtic legend, Avalon is a mystic island that represents Paradise," Magnière said. "We like to think of it as an ideal, something we strive for. And besides, nobody could remember, or pronounce, Katahdin. Avalon is an easy name to remember."

Sumire Kudo, the current cellist in the quartet, was originally introduced to Magnière and Wang at the Aspen Music Festival in 1997 by David Finckel, the cellist in the Emerson String Quartet. Kudo was studying with Finckel that summer, and the Avalons were about to begin a residency with the Emerson Quartet. "At the time, it didn't work out [for Kudo to join the quartet] because she was still in Japan," recalled Wang. "We went through one cello change before her." But a few years later, when the Avalon was searching for a new cellist, Kudo had moved to the United States and was eager to join the quartet.

As for Avalon Quartet violist Che-Yen Chen, he met Magnière and Wang during the summer of 1998 and later performed with Kudo at the Marlboro Music Festival the following summer. Kudo and Chen officially joined the quartet in 2001.

According to Chen, joining an existing quartet involves different challenges from forming an entirely new quartet. "It's enjoyable to have two violinists who already know how to play together, because it's one less thing to learn. If I had joined a group that had three original members, it would have been even easier because they would have had their own sound already."

Chen added that, despite the need to match the other player's styles, chamber music still allows the opportunity for individual expression. "You have to match the way of playing, whether you agree or not. It's about give and take. The [other players] give you boundaries, but within the boundary you have freedom."

The quartet has been in residence at Juilliard throughout the 2001-02 academic year. Wang said that the Juilliard residency was particularly appealing because "it's one of the few residencies that allows us to work with students ourselves." The Avalons assist with the freshman string-quartet survey class. They also coach quartets that normally work with the Juilliard String Quartet when it is on tour.

The Avalon Quartet has also received regular coachings from members of the Juilliard Quartet. Magnière said that the members of the J.S.Q. are "very different from one another, which is surprising [because] they're in the same quartet. But I'm sure that that is what makes the quartet great."

One might wonder what effect the Avalon members' different backgrounds have on their music-making. Magnière grew up in Normandy, France, whereas Wang was born in Quebec City, Canada. Chen hails from Taipei, Taiwan, and Kudo is a native of Tokyo, Japan.

Magnière is skeptical of generalizations about national styles of playing. However, he added that "the language you speak has a slight influence on the music you do because you hear specific kinds of sounds. In that sense, maybe there is a little bit of a different feel to players from each country because of the language." He described his native language as spoken "very quickly and it's not so deep, and it's all in the lips. I think that's why French playing is characterized [as it is]."

Musical differences aside, Magnière said that a player's cultural background does impact what it is like to work with the other members of the group. "There is a difference between the way Asian and Western cultures function in general, so it's been very enriching for me to work with people from different backgrounds," he said. "With the Western culture, people immediately try to make an impression and say what they are like." With Asian people, the approach is "less obviously demonstrative. We got to know each other more gradually. This doesn't apply to the playing, of course, but purely to the interactions."

Magnière, the only quartet member who is not of Asian descent, mentioned with a smile that "when we're on tour, we always end up in Asian restaurants."

Free tickets for the Arnhold Memorial Concert are available at the Juilliard Box Office beginning Tuesday, April 9.

Ed Klorman is a second-year viola student of Heidi Castleman and Hsin-Yun Huang.