For you, Prof. Hilley

To excerpt a recent email from our dear friend and mentor, Martha Hilley -

"I know you have done things in 2013 so update your blog ! ! !"

Wise, wise words. Prof. Hilley is incidentally the reason this blog exists in the first place, as a spin-off project from a music business class years ago at UT. So when she says to update the blog, we update the blog!

We're happily back in UT territory for the rest of July, serving as Quartet in Residence at the Austin Chamber Music Center. Here's a silly video of Greg and me chatting with ACMC's lovely Michelle Schumann about the upcoming workshop, and life:

CHATS


And in case you missed us somehow this morning on KUTX with the amazing human that is John Aielli, as well as lovely Michelle again, here we are playing some tunes on the radio:

TUNES

Hurricane Greetings

So as Hurricane Sandy and possibly the end of the world approaches, I find myself in a reflective mood. I believe it was while standing in a line a mile long at the grocery store, trying to buy some laundry detergent, hemmed in by panicked shoppers stockpiling flashlights and dry goods, that I first considered I may not be taking this storm seriously enough. Having just returned from a glorious week of concerts and educational performances at middle and high schools in the Tacoma/Seattle area, my jetlagged and outreach-oriented mind has not yet switched to hurricane survival mode. We played for over 1500 students during our stay in Washington, generally at shockingly early times in the morning (who knew that high school started at 7:15am?!) Check out this clip, generously filmed by Brian Fox of the Puyallup School District, to get an idea of early morning Aeolus and our awesome audiences -





But outreach isn't all we've been up to in the past few weeks. We also took a quick jaunt to Germany, where we had delicious food and beer and got to play in the Laeiszhalle at Johannes-Brahms-Platz (pictured below).

And back in DC, we had one of our more surreal experiences as we found ourselves taking the stage directly after a speech by Joe Biden. We got the picture pretty quickly upon the realization that the entire backstage area was surrounded by Secret Service. Here's Greg musing over the speech in the wings -

But anyway I've just been informed that it may be prudent to fill up the tub in the event of manual toilet flushing. Manual toilet flushing??? Oh man. Stay safe east coast loved ones!

A Tiny Video from the St. Lawrence String Quartet Seminar

And also this picture, because it is amazing. Lesley Robertson of the SLSQ generously gave us a mini private screening of old string quartet videos, and we were delighted to catch this shot of our hero, Joel Krosnick!!!

I also find it necessary to add this photo of us with another hero, Professor Parker of the Gryphon Trio! Please check out his critically acclaimed series of instructional videos on Facebook, particularly if you are a violist :)

I know I said this was just going to be a video, but the kids participating in Stanford University's Educational Programs for Gifted Youth were so awesome. We feel honored to have been given the opportunity to get to know these guys - performing for them, discussing music with them, or just hanging out. At our last session with the EPGY guys, they each wrote their own short string quartet -and we read through all 2.5 hours of them :) here we are with Alan squared:

A huge thank you to the St. Lawrence Quartet for putting together an incredibly inspiring seminar, to Heidi Lee for organizing absolutely everything and taking us to all the best places to eat in the Bay Area, and Anna Wittstruck and the EPGY kids for being awesome.

aaaaaand the video:

Spring Adventures

Where do I even begin. Imagine my horror upon realizing that the last post on our beloved blog is from 2011!?!? Somehow amidst travels to Mexico and London, several memorable trips to New York, the creation of the Ultra-Trone (a programmed metronome device that deserves explanation in its own blog post), and the constant refinement of our tuning system (please refer to blog video #1) Aeolus' Spring 2012 has not yet been documented here! Let's start with this past week-

We returned to the incredibly inspiring Juilliard String Quartet Seminar for a week of coachings with first violinist Joseph Lin and violist Samuel Rhodes, culminating in performances in Juilliard's Paul Recital Hall by all participating groups. Our first time at the Seminar was in 2010, and it proved to be a pivotal experience in the development of our quartet. The 2010 Seminar also marked the first (and last) time all four of us stayed together in one hotel room for an entire week - thankfully, we have left those days far behind.

We are so grateful for the mentorship and inspiration provided by the Juilliard String Quartet!

Greg and Alan discussing the finer points of Beethoven's Op. 95 with Juilliard Quartet second violinist Ronald Copes.

Finding ourselves with just a little too much free time between our dress rehearsal and concert at Juilliard yesterday, we filmed a brief clip that I feel really captures the essence of Aeolus Quartet violist,  Greg Luce. Please enjoy.

Another highlight of our spring has been some unique opportunities afforded us in our position as graduate quartet in residence at the University of Maryland. Professor Ken Slowik, extraordinary academic and curator of the rare instrument collection at the Smithsonian Institute, recently ushered us into the museum after hours and, to our amazement, unlocked the display cases and allowed us to play on an assortment of priceless Stradivarius and Amati instruments! This was a dream come true, made even more dream-like by the fact that we were alone in the Smithsonian at 11:30pm.

Professor Slowik removing instruments from their display case as Nick marvels at a Strad.

Greg holding possibly the world's most coveted viola - 1663 Nicolo Amati "Professor Wirth".

Thank you for keeping up with us, more to come soon! I promise!

Recent Reviews

We've had our share of critical attention over the years... but never like this.  Check out some recent words from our new buddies at Mt. Penn Elementary's fourth grade class:

from tough critics:
"Thank you for coming to our school and playing for us.  We all (even Tyler) enjoyed your music" -Anna

and technical mastery:
"I really liked your music, and instruments, and your form" - Draven

to the generic:
"Thank you for the good music and about the violins and stuff" - Walter

from incredible music-inspired stories:
"Thank you, thank you, thank you I really love your music. The story I would like to share is a girl running in a mansion and falls into a weird world and she has to get out of there before taco night.  She felt she was gone for months but technically only 5 mins in the real world.  She finally finds a sign that says EXIT. She's finally home in time for taco night even though she was only gone for 10 mins isn't that funny. I really like this idea for a story and it's very creative" - Maria

"Thank you for coming. My story is a man who gets chased by wolves into a cave he found some gold and bought a horse and put the gold in the saddle pocket and got married wolves came back and he died" - Jai

and career advice:
"I think your quartet could go to the Olympics and play for them" - Owen

to mysterious words about Alan:
"I like the stuff you played. I like the guy who plays the Alan" - Anonymous

and perhaps our most accurate quartet depiction to date. New publicity material?:

This is the reason we love doing outreach. What an amazing excuse to hang out with creative, hilarious kids and talk about why music is awesome.  Thank you to our new friends at Mt. Penn Elementary!

I was not kidding...

...terrifyingly enormous. The Monster Quartet visits Dalian, People's Republic of China.

Jetlagged and happy

Hello blogging world! It's wonderful to see you again. We have just spent the past couple weeks gallavanting about China, where the "bandwidths" of many google-supported sites are "throttled", or so Nick tells me. I know nothing of these things, but I am certainly appreciating not having to load everything in basic html, for hours at a time. But there are so many incredible things about China and our experiences there that we will never forget!

First things first - food.

Our wonderful, patient, and hilarious tour managers from Wu Promotion as well as from various local agencies made sure that we always had at least 15 plates, per meal. Tiny tables were literally stacked with dishes.  And the managers liked to make fun of us for not finishing everything!!!

A particularly memorable meal - lunch on our last day of tour! Beijing-style hotpot, with lamb and STOMACH and these incredible lamb-skewer-things with a kind of dry rub that would've made Texas proud. And Peking duck omgggg

We played lots of concerts too, in awesome halls -

Our first show, at Shanghai Oriental Arts Center. Do you like our outfits? They are quite new. All our checked bags got lost because of a close connection (and I mean CLOSE, I've never run so fast through an airport terminal in my life, with a string of Chinese attendants cheering me on/yelling to go faster) so we spent the morning of our first day in China shopping! <3 I was quite pleased, and so were the boys...

And this was the festival at which we were asked the question we have been waiting for, for so many years: Do we want fog machines. To be honest, this is more of a dream for the boys than for me, but I understand the gravity of the situation. To everyone's immense disappointment, the smoke didn't work out, but do not worry, the light show did. We had no idea we would be performing during the Autumn Moon Festival, but it was really an experience to remember!

Then there was this enormous backdrop-

And believe it or not, an even bigger poster of our faces in Dalian, which was terrifying. Pics of that to come, I believe they're all on Nick's camera

Ahh there are so many pictures I want to post on this thing. But another little detail - the Aeolus Quartet now lives in the Washington DC area, as we have just begun a doctoral quartet residency at the University of Maryland! I have found that a great antidote to jetlag is unpacking all the boxes in my apartment. So as I get back to that important task, I will leave you with this photo of our tour bus -

just kidding. But we did have a lot of fun riding around in these things :)