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Chiara Quartet's 'Dream Scenario' Nears Its End By JONAH SIROTA AND REBECCA FISCHER
As the second year of the Chiara Quartet's two-year residency at Juilliard nears its end and we prepare for our final recital at Alice Tully Hall, we have all started looking back on our time here. Each of us has spent at least four years of our lives at Juilliard, studying, performing, and—more recently—teaching. (For some of us, it's been nearly eight years.) But when we began our individual studies, we had no idea that our paths would become so intertwined into a common future. And we didn't know that we would complete our time here as Lisa Arnhold fellows (as the members of the resident graduate string quartet are called). What a great assignment: studying string quartets intensively with the members of the Juilliard String Quartet, rehearsing, performing, and starting to share our discoveries with the next generation of musicians. The Lisa Arnhold residency is a dream scenario—and when we discovered in the spring of 2003 that we had been selected to spend two years doing this, it really was a major step in the fulfillment of our dream of a life in chamber music.
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| (Left to right) Greg Beaver, Julie Yoon, Jonah Sirota, and Rebecca Fischer are the Chiara String Quartet, Juilliard's graduate string quartet-in-residence.
(Photo by Christian Steiner) |
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It's not an easy thing to do—not just play string quartets, but do it full-time, for a living, in a way that is artistically gratifying. It has meant (and continues to mean) making sacrifices for the sake of the ensemble, choosing a path less stable than an orchestra job, not always having health insurance, not always having money to pay the rent. But it means that, on any given day, we can all gather in our studio on the fourth floor, take out our instruments, and read through two more Bach chorales (a project that we started in our first year of this residency; we're into the 200s now) before spending three or four hours rehearsing the most incredible music in sometimes excruciating detail—Haydn, Bartok, Beethoven, Dutilleux, Brahms, and the great composers of the next generation: Jefferson Friedman, Nico Muhly, and Gabriela Frank, all good friends. And then the icing on the cake: getting to perform this music for audiences all over. Our generation knows we can no longer afford to let the audience find us; we've got to go hunting for new ears. Luckily, this is a joyous pursuit. Juilliard's Arts in Education program and our two years in a Chamber Music America Rural Residency in North Dakota have provided us with tools to uncover these new audiences. And we have found them in many different places—from concert halls to schools, hospitals to beet fields. In that spirit, we would like to invite you to our upcoming Lisa Arnhold Memorial Recital in Alice Tully Hall on April 26. We will perform Mozart's Quartet in D Major, K. 575, the Brahms C-Minor Quartet, and we will also be premiering the String Quartet No. 3 by Jefferson Friedman, commissioned by the Brooklyn Friends of Chamber Music for this concert.
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| The Chiara Quartet gave its first Arnhold recital in March 2004. (Photo by Peter Schaaf) |
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One of the great benefits of being performers is the opportunity to form relationships with living composers that continue to grow throughout our respective careers. Our friendship with Jefferson (who was awarded a 2003-04 Rome Prize from the American Academy of Rome) is one of the most rewarding examples. We first worked with him when we were all students at the Aspen Music Festival in 1996, and subsequently premiered his First String Quartet. We all met again when we were master's students at Juilliard (he was a student of John Corigliano), and a casual conversation resulted in the composition of his String Quartet No. 2. This work, which we premiered at Paul Hall in fall 1999, continues to be one of our favorite and most performed compositions.Jefferson's string quartets are defined by their personal nature. He describes his quartets as "abstract diary entries" and the act of writing them as "pure expression." The string quartet medium is, for him, the most immediate and intimate—sentiments often shared by other composers. Because we are such good friends with Jefferson, his music reflects our combined experiences; he writes for the Chiara Quartet both as a unit, and for each of our individual strengths and personalities.
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Lisa Arnhold Memorial Recital
Chiara String Quartet
Alice Tully Hall
Wednesday, April 26, 8 p.m.
Free tickets available beginning April 12 in the Juilliard Box Office..
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The following anecdote certainly illuminates how the lives of composers and performers can become eerily intertwined. In late September, Rebecca sent out an e-mail announcing the birth of her daughter, Oriana. Jefferson—whom we hadn't seen since we performed his String Quartet No. 2 in Italy that spring—was back in New York after his yearlong fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. He responded with an excited congratulations, and then this note: "Now we get to the weird stuff: two nights ago, Sept. 21 [Oriana's birthday], on the subway, I figured out how SQ3 is going to end—with a solo first-violin lullaby for the yet-to-be-named Oriana. Coincidence or maybe something in the air."Jefferson says that he had been thinking about his String Quartet No. 3 since the day he finished No. 2. The Chiara Quartet has been waiting for the right time to commission him for this composition, and we are now honored to be sharing it with the audience at our upcoming concert!Violist Jonah Sirota and violinist Rebecca Fischer are members of the Chiara String Quartet.
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