Clippings

This article appeared in its original form in Strings Magazine in the May/June 2000 issue. Excerpts chosen by the author.

You should have heard us.
    "Are you sure she turned here? Are you really, really sure? Could she have been driving so fast that we can't see her ahead?"
    "Yes, I'm sure. Really. At least, I was sure..."
    "Uh-oh."

    There we were, on the way to our first presentation, and we were in trouble. We'd lost our host mom at a traffic light and we had absolutely no idea where we were going.

    Maybe I should backtrack a bit. In October 1998, our quartet at Eastman (hastily dubbed Quartetto Incognito for no reason other than that we needed a name and it sounded neat) won an audition for the New Performing Arts program, which would bring our musical programming to schoolkids all over Kentucky, plus full concert programs performed in three towns where we stayed. The original plan was to do the tour over 2 weeks in March 1999, one of which was spring break. But then the date was changed to the fall, which created major scheduling headaches. Our original cellist is a triple major who just couldn't afford to miss that much school, and one violinist couldn't get off work that long. The other violin player, Sonya Stith (now Williams), and I, the violist, still really wanted to go, so we started poking around for replacements.

    When Kasia Bielak-Hoops turned up in my quartet at Soundfest that summer and I discovered she was transferring to Eastman, I knew we had our cellist. In August, it looked like our violinist Jenn D'Alessio would be able to get the time off work after all, and we were ready to rehearse - until she injured her wrist in an accident at the end of August. What to do? Well, that's what former roommates are for, right? Enter Emi Takahashi in the open violin spot, at which point we had 24 days in which to learn Beethoven's Op. 18, No. 1, Shostakovitch's Eighth (which Kasia and I had played that summer), the Brahms Piano Quintet (to be played with Steve Wogaman, the head of New Performing Arts), Spider Dreams by the Turtle Island String Quartet, and all the other bits and pieces we needed for the educational programming. Sure, why not? We're young, we're nuts, and we were willing to put in insane amounts of time and hope we wouldn't be ready to kill each other by the end of it.

Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Wednesday, 21 March, 2001
Eastman musicians take show to schools
By Staff Writer Matthew Daneman

The chamber music quartet settled into their seats and launched into a piece by 19th-century composer Bedrich Smetana. And the audience - not nattily dressed grownups but eighth-graders in jeans and Timberland boots - watched and listened in rapt attention. One day a year for the past four years, Eastman School of Music chamber musicians have played classical music for a decidedly non-traditional audience - local schoolchildren. "It's nice," said 13-year-old Jefferson Middle School student Magdiel Matinas. "It relaxes you." For Eastman students, the Music For All program is an exercise in dealing with the changing face of chamber music, said David Beauchesne, assistant director of Eastman's arts leadership program.	"The standard performance practices of chamber music - walking out on stage, performing, bowing and leaving - that's becoming more infrequent," he said. "Chamber groups are being asked more and more to perform in front of more diverse audiences." The National Endowment of the Arts even has a rural residency program with the aim of bringing chamber music to rural America. For some of the Jefferon eighth-graders, it was a dose of cultural broadening, said music teacher Deborah Wachspress. "Most of these students have not had the opportunity to see classical music live ... or any live performance at all. Unless the new generation listens to it, there's not going to be - and I hate to use these terms - a market for it.
		More than 40 Eastman students performed yesterday at area schools - from Irondequoit High School to City School 58 on University Avenue. In between pieces at Jefferson, students peppered the musicians with questions about their instruments and the music, about the cost of attending the Eastman School (tuition is slightly more than $21,000 a year) and how much effort musicianship takes (four or so hours of practice a day, minimum). "Music is so foreign for a lot of people," said	Eastman master's student and violinist Sonya Williams, 22. "We really enjoy telling them about it ... to sort of connect them to it." The musicians also had the challenge of capturing the attention of the few students who gazed out the window or put their heads down on their desks. Amiyra Muhammad doesn't play an instrument now. But the Eastman demonstration was so inspirational that she's ready to practice six hours a day, she said. "I want to play some instrument," the 14-year-old said. "It looks fun."