The Æolus Quartet will give several performances around Iowa City this week as part of its String Quartet Residency.
By Claire Dietz
[email protected]
A string quartet from New York will have an interesting opportunity to become acquainted with what the University of Iowa School of Music has to offer.
The Æolus Quartet is on campus this week (through Saturday), offering several concerts and workshops that are open to the public. This is the first time the quartet will perform in Iowa.
Elizabeth Oakes, the coordinator for the string quartet residency program and a fan of Aeolus, hopes to show younger generations of musicians the potential their field holds for them.
“This is a great opportunity for our students to see people who are their age or close to it creating a living in the field and what’s that like,” she said. “It’s different for me — I have been in the field for a long time — versus what it’s like to be in the field now. It’s a very on-the-ground experience that they’re capable of sharing with us.”
Quartet member Gregory Luce said the students are capable of teaching him just as much, if not more, than what he will teach them.
“One thing I really love about teaching is that you learn things that you never knew you were already aware of,” he said. “You find yourself wandering into a topic and flushing out thoughts that were subconscious before but now become conscious in order to talk about an idea while playing the music.”
[youtube id=”T00YmEXxrb4″ mode=”normal”]
Pat Addis, a community member involved in the residency, has helped create what Oakes called a “wonderful opportunity for students to reach chamber music with musicians in Iowa City, both amateur and professional. Addis recognized just what it takes to come together as a group and create music.”
“One of the things we treasure most about playing chamber music is that it always seems to bring out a unified effort from all; no one simply mails it in,” Addis said. “Even when some of the players have just met for the first time in the practice room, the music generates a single focus, and players become a single being, an amazing phenomenon, one that Franck, Dvorak, and Brahms would recognize and applaud.”
In Thursday’s Piano Quintet Reading Session, undergraduate and graduate students will have the opportunity to play with Æolus.
Korak Lertpibulchai, a graduate student from Thailand with a love of the composer César Franck, said the prospect is rare and unique.
“This is one of my favorite piano quintets,” Lertpibulchai said. “It is a great opportunity for me to play with these fantastic artists from New York, and I’m so grateful for that opportunity. And we’re performing with my favorite piece, no less.”
Unlike many of the other events, there is only a brief opportunity to rehearse together before the performance. Rather than being daunted by this, Helen Ninoska Mendez, a graduate student from the Dominican Republic, is thrilled by it.
“I am so excited about playing in the moment with them,” she said. “We won’t have time before to rehearse, so it will be interesting to see how everyone will collaborate together and how we will adjust. I think that’s great, when you have that opportunity to do spontaneous music without much thinking.”
Above all else, Oakes is hopeful about bringing chamber music to people who may hold misconceptions about it.
“I think classical music, especially chamber music, has this appearance of being very highbrow and not relevant, and there’s nothing further from the truth,” she said. “It’s such a human endeavor and a beautiful, intimate art form. It’s like a rock band; four people come up and make music for an audience.”
MUSIC
Æolus String Quartet Residency Lineup
TODAY
12:30 p.m., University Capitol Center Recital Hall
3:30 p.m., Dey House
THURSDAY
11:30 a.m., University Capitol Center Recital Hall
7 p.m., University Capitol Center Recital Hall
SATURDAY
7:30 p.m., Riverside Recital Hall