- Well, when we were in Grand Forks, North Dakota,
which is the community in which we were placed
as part of the rural residency program,
we did just about everything you can imagine
involving string instruments.
We spent probably four or five hours a day rehearsing.
Well, in the beginning, we sort of set
up that schedule for ourselves, tried to protect it,
so that we made sure that we had enough time to rehearse.
But we were teaching at the university,
we were teaching students privately,
Jonah was conducting the junior symphony.
We were helping to run a high school
and junior high chamber music program.
What else were we doing?
Playing in schools,
playing in nursing homes. - Tin teaching also private,
younger students as well. - Yeah.
Yeah, just doing just about everything,
actually at one point
we were teaching a string methods class
for education majors at the University of North Dakota,
which was pretty interesting for us.
And we actually learned,
we got a lesson ourselves on how to play the bass
but things like that,
there aren't a lot of professional string players
in the entire state of North Dakota.
And so they were really happy to have four (laughs)
professional string players.
So they really used us, I think,
but it was very exciting.
It was a neat time.
- Yes.
Yeah, well, our time in Grand Forks was very interesting.
Grand Forks was certainly not a community that was
unfamiliar with the importance of music
being a Midwestern,
predominantly Norwegian, Lutheran community.
There was a huge choral tradition there.
So lots of people loved chorus music
and choir music
and plenty of piano players
and band and all that kind of stuff.
In fact, in the schools orchestra as well
there were, we were just shocked to find that
although the university had no full-time strings faculty
that the high schools had as many string students
as hockey.
Right? - Yeah, hockey players.
- And hockey is huge up there. - Yeah.
- So that was really fascinating for us
to see how much interest in music there was.
I think, what us being there did,
among other things, is that it showed the community
and especially the younger people in the community
that it was possible to do what we did,
to play music, to perform for a living.
- Yeah to be a professional musician
was a really sort of novel idea.
And it was kind of put forth
in the sense that we,
when we first got there
we got all these calls
for wedding gigs.
People always wanted, you know, a string quartet
to play at their wedding or at their party.
And we turned them all down
because we said, "Well actually,
"we're a performing ensemble.
"We don't do gigs."
And fortunately, we didn't really need to do gigs,
although in New York we needed to do them a little bit more,
but it was the idea of sort of reinforcing the idea
that if you have a,
if you're in a professional situation
just playing concerts, that is your primary role
and that there were some other musicians in the community
who could play, you know,
sort of background music. - Background music.
- But we made a real commitment
to never play any background music
while we were there to really sort of reinforce
the professional element.
Well, there were several things we really gained
by being in Grand Forks.
I think maybe some of the primary things were
having really enough time to rehearse and develop our sound
and develop our group aesthetic and, you know,
sort of get our jobs together and things like that.
Just get the sort of beginnings of quartet
in terms of business and in terms of our own playing.
And also we really gained the opportunity to experiment
with programming and with the presentation
of those programs for all different kinds of audiences.
We really were able to define exactly what
we feel is important
to us as a string quartet in terms of our mission
of why we play string quartets.
I mean, that was very important to us
to realize that we want to play for all audiences
and that we believe chamber music really speaks
to all audiences.
We were able to sort of explore that mission
when we were in Grand Forks.
- And there, if there's one element of that
that we were kind of surprised to learn about,
it was that, you know, we could do
what we really feel strongly artistically in terms of,
you know, without watering it down
we could play, for instance, new pieces
that we thought were great
or classics of the 20th century that often get a bum rap
and programming and that if we
gave audiences an in to them and spoke to them a little bit
that they were really thrilled to hear this music
and also thrilled to hear Haydn and Beethoven.
So,
that sense of being able to define our mission
and realize that we didn't have to
in any way compromise artistically,
it was also really useful information for us.