The Chiara Quartet is back on tour and has one more show in NYC this week (they actually played Sunday in Southport, CT and tonight(!) at Symphony Space but your humble/slacker correspondent wasn’t able to get this ready in time for y’all).  Anyway, you’ll still have a chance to catch them on Wednesday at (Le) Poisson Rouge (158 Bleecker Street) performing Different Trains, Webern’s Five Pieces for String Quartet, and Jefferson Friedman’s 2nd Quartet.

Somehow Jonah, Becca, Julie, and Greg were able to find time between rehearsals and performances to answer a few questions for us.  Enjoy….

JH: During this tour you’ll be pairing Beethoven with Jefferson Friedman one night (Sunday in Southport, CT), and Steve Reich with Anton Webern another night (Wednesday at Le Poisson Rouge). How does the quartet come up with, and agree on, these kinds of programs? Is this just an extension of a “shuffle” musical experience that our generation is getting so used to?

Jonah:
Well, the “shuffle” idea is interesting, in that I’m sure there are pairings we would consider that might not have been considered in the pre-ipod era.  Having said that, we think quite a bit about our programs.  Jefferson Friedman writes very well-crafted forms–the quartets are as formally strict as much of Beethoven (especially since Beethoven was basically trying to expand and sometimes explode form).  And yet the vocabulary is completely different.  So that’s an interesting juxtaposition.  Reich (“Different Trains”) uses nearly a half-hour of repeated music and voice to build an unexpected emotional bridge between his own childhood train travel and the experience of Holocaust survivors.  Webern manages to say everything he needs to, sometimes, in only ten measures of music.  Both work brilliantly, so that’s another interesting combination for us.  Programs are often a creative collaboration between us and a presenter.  Some programs are entire evenings that we conceptualize.  Next year, we are commissioning several composers and having them curate the program for their premiere (the project is called Creator/Curator).  So, it really depends on the performance.  But, the way the four of us are, we only play music that we all believe in.

JH: Another thing that seems to be really important to the quartet is playing in lots of different kinds of venues – big concert halls, small recital halls, libraries, bars, etc. Does the venue inspire the programming or does the programming inspire the venue?

Becca:
We feel that string quartet music appeals to all people, all audiences, which is one reason why we choose to perform in varied spaces.  Many spaces work well for listening to chamber music, and there is no “ideal” space (i.e. the formal silence of a concert hall can be stifling, and the clunking of an ice-machine in a bar can be distracting), so we try to create an environment on any stage that is inviting for audiences.  We do tailor programming to certain spaces but we also challenge a space to host partlcular programs.  We usually organize our club programs into two set lists, much like you would hear from a jazz quartet, and we tend to focus more on newer music for these performances.  So in the opening set you could hear a movement from a quartet by Jefferson Friedman, followed by a movement from Haydn, followed by some Webern, followed by more Friedman, maybe some Brahms, etc.  We feel like audiences often want a full piece by the second set, so we’ll perform a complete work in most of these venues, certainly not minding applause between movements (we encourage it if people are so moved!).  We have brought this more varied style of programming to concert halls, and have found that the environment is more relaxed than usual–we don’t usually bow until the end of a set, and we talk from the stage.  In these situations we also talk to individual audiences members during intermission.

The more informal atmosphere of a club and the ability to change our program on the spot is wonderfully liberating and has inspired us to be more inventive in all of our performances–this applies to the spontaneity of playing itself and the actual programming.   Most of our more interesting programs in concert halls have come from the freedom we feel in unconventional spaces and the idea that we are “curating” an evening.

JH: The quartet premiered a new piece by Ivan Moody (Monday at Symphony Space), can you tell us about it?

Julie:
It is a piece written for string quartet and piano entitled Nocturne of Light.  We’ll be premiering it at Symphony Space with pianist Paul Barnes who is a colleague of ours at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (where we’re in residence).  Paul is a devout believer in the Greek Orthodox faith and is continually exploring how spirituality and music connect.  This piece is a beautiful outcome of that exploration and features Byzantine chants, one of which Paul and his son will intone before our performance.

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