Aug
21
2010
Aeolus String Quartet – interview
Author: andrew
Aeolus String Quartet - Alan Richardson, Rachel Shapiro, Nicholas Tavani, and Gregory Luce (l-r)
We continue our interview series today by talking to the Aeolus String Quartet, winners of the 2009 Coleman International Chamber Music Competition in Pasadena, CA, where they were awarded the Coleman-Barstow Prize for Strings. Hailed by Strad Magazine for their “high-octane” performances and by the Reading Eagle for their “spirited and precise” playing, the Aeolus Quartet is among the finest young quartets performing today. The Aeolus Quartet consists of Nicholas Tavani and Rachel Shapiro playing violins, Gregory Luce on viola, and Alan Richardson on the cello – they’ve each contributed to this interview.
Can you tell me a little bit about yourself – where you’re from and why you decided to pursue music as a career?
Greg: Our string quartet is currently the graduate quartet-in-residence at the University of Texas at Austin, studying with the Miro Quartet. The quartet formed in 2006 at the Cleveland Institute of Music. At that point our friend Zack Collins was actually the violist of the ensemble, but he decided to go along the orchestral route and left the quartet. I joined the quartet in the fall of 2008. Nick and I had known each other for eight years already at that point as we had attended festivals together since we were in high school and middle school. We still remember a lot of conversations from those days and how nerdy they were, but the love for chamber music was something we shared with one another right away.
What are you doing these days? Who have you been collaborating with recently?
Alan: We’ve had an extremely exciting summer, playing music all around the country. Starting in May, we spent a couple of weeks in the northeast, with a week long seminar in New York, some time rehearsing in Philadelphia, and then a competition in New York and Boston. We also spent time in Palo Alto and San Francisco, Topeka KS, and a month in Vail CO. The hiking in Colorado was unreal, and they treated us very well. We also had a lot of exciting opportunities for collaboration with other artists this summer. We had the honor of performing quintets with flautist Eugenia Zuckerman, cellist Sophie Shao, and violist Rebecca Albers at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival. Also at Bravo!, we participated in a chamber orchestra alongside the fantastic Rosetti Quartet and violinist Chee-yun. It is always a lot of fun to throw an extra musician in the mix, and playing in larger ensembles is something we can’t get enough of, also. It’s always a totally different experience. We’re now on our way to the Perlman Music Program in Shelter Island, NY, where we will get to collaborate with the incredible violist Roger Tapping, and our old mentors from Cleveland, violinist Annie Fullard and cellist Merry Peckham. There will be a lot of other incredible young musicians there, and it should be a pretty awesome time.
How did you go about forming a group? Is it hard to find a set of people who play well together?
Greg: Forming a group is a bit of an anomaly in chamber music ensembles. I know one quartet who were thrown together when they were on their early teens at high school and have been playing together for over ten years now. That’s very different than most ensembles, which seem to form from years of failed attempts at making the string quartet thing work out. It’s very hard to find a group of people that play well together, but more important than performance chemistry is that the four musicians are all equally committed. That seems to be the hardest thing, really, since without any performances lined up at the outset there’s really no reason to be committed, per se, but people do certainly see/hear commitment in quartet playing when they are confronted by it. I think that when the commitment is there, the quality of playing goes through the roof much quicker.
Do you have any exciting projects in the works?
Rachel: I think you could say that… We’re preparing for an upcoming tour featuring the works of American composers (a couple of which are our close friends) made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. So that will keep us pretty busy performing throughout Texas, and as far away as New York City. We plan on keeping active within Austin as well, partnering with a local organization called CHAMPS to mentor high school chamber ensembles, culminating in a joint performance at the University of Texas. We will also be releasing an album on the Longhorn Music label this fall – be on the lookout for it!
When you’re preparing a piece for the first time how do you select an edition of sheet music to play from? How do you go about creating your interpretation of a piece?
Nick: What an interesting question! We usually try to get an edition of either the score or the parts which doesn’t have much added to what the composer originally wrote – an urtext. Of course, sometimes this is very hard to determine, as there are often multiple original sources or sometimes no manuscript at all. We also look at how well the pages are laid out – small print, crowded notes, and bad page turns are the bane of a musician’s existence! However, it’s always interesting to see the bowing and especially fingering solutions that editors – particularly those from the 19th century – came up with. Sometimes, it casts things in a new light. Also, there are usually one or two juicy slides in which I can convince my colleagues to let me indulge. Every so often you’ve got to satisfy your soul, you know?
What music do you most enjoy listening to? Who do you most admire?
Nick: Strictly baroque oboe concertos, nothing more, nothing less. Just kidding. Actually, when we’re together on a roadtrip, classical music rarely turns up on our iPods. (Sometimes, though, we’ll go all out with a Mahler symphony or something.) Our group favorite by a wide margin is Radiohead – their daring experimentation with new sounds and structures puts them, at least in my mind, up there with some of the great “classical” composers writing today. I’m pretty sure we have most of the songs on their albums memorized. On the other end of the spectrum, our recent roadtrip to the Perlman Music Program consisted largely of 1980s one-hit wonders from Greg. And of course, we’ll always be fans of those winsome songsmiths Tenacious D.
Do you have a website that people can visit?
Greg: In fact, we do! www.aeolusquartet.com – please stop by and take a look around. There are some sound samples, movies, and a blog that’s a lot of fun… for us, at least.
Thank you to members of the Aeolus String Quartet for taking time to give this interview. You can find string quartet sheet music, and music for all their favorite pieces at MyLiszt.com – including Tenacious D sheet music, Radiohead sheet music and even Mahler sheet music.
