Outreach event with the Isidore Quartet at Edgewood Fine Arts Academy on May 5, 2025
On the rainy morning of May 5, 2025, the four young men of the Isidore String Quartet headed to the small stage of the Edgewood Fine Arts Academy and began to warm up: Phoenix Avalon and Adrian Steele, violins, Devin Moore, viola, and Joshua McClendon, cello. Knowing they were going to open with Mozart’s “Dissonance” Quartet for these high schoolers, I had asked them if after I introduced them, I could use them as my guinea pigs to explain the quartet’s nickname – they’d agreed, and I was eager to see if my interactive demonstration would land.
The group of around 40 students sat politely, but initially without much enthusiasm. It was a Monday, it was the morning, it was rainy, and these were high schoolers. One of the first things I asked was, “So have any of you heard a string quartet before?” No one raised a hand, and I smiled. “Well, you’ve got a good one in front of you!”
To emphasize the jarring sounds in the “Dissonance” Quartet’s opening and to focus the students’ attention, I asked Josh and Devin to play just the viola and cello lines in the first phrase, which demonstrate the music’s minor key and establish a brooding pulse. With that music alone, a few students described the music quite accurately: “Gloomy…” “Sad…” “Dark…” were some of the responses. I proceeded to ask Adrian to play, adding the mysterious 2nd violin part that features some of Mozart’s famous dissonances. When I asked the students whether they could hear the difference, they nodded enthusiastically. “Great,” I said, “Now let’s add Phoenix, so we hear what Mozart actually wrote. After listening to this unusually tense musical introduction, the now-gripped students confirmed the emotional environment: “It sounds spooky,” one said. “It definitely sounds like something’s wrong…” another chimed in.
Confident that they were now listening with care, I nodded to the quartet and explained to the students that they would hear the entire movement, and invited them to listen very closely for sudden changes in the music’s mood. The Isidore Quartet then delivered a passionate, vibrant rendition that led to enthusiastic applause for the students, who were all experiencing world-class string quartet playing for the very first time.
Appreciative that these stellar musicians allowed me to lead the first half of the event, I turned it over to Devin Moore to talk about their next piece, Carrot Revolution by the young Gabriella Smith. Devin explained that it’s a piece about reframing. Smith herself was inspired by the Cézanne quote, “The day will come when a single, freshly observed carrot will start a revolution.” The idea is to keep revisiting old material with fresh observations and new contexts, because the inspiration for change and development is as much in our changing perceptions as anything else. With this in mind, Smith mixes snippets of older music (Bach, Georgian folk songs, Celtic fiddle tunes) with newer genres like Rock and Pop, to create an exhilarating thrill ride for the somewhat archaic genre of ‘string quartet.’ The students had an absolute blast listening to this, and as I expected, had some questions after the performance.
Pointing to Josh the cellist, one student asked, “Is that one part really hard to play?” The student was referring to a point in the music that had Josh playing constant bariolage, an effect where his bow needs to swing wildly back and forth to create a steady sonic effect under the other instruments. “Honestly,” Josh said, “it’s not hard – it’s just tiring to do it for that long.” This led to an interesting discussion about stamina during certain passages. Another student wondered how they were able to play so together, when they barely seemed to look at each other. Adrian, the 2nd violinist, explained that it’s all about feeling the groove, which is not something that classical musicians are usually trained for. He has a background in fiddle playing, which gives him a leg up, but he explained that making sure all four musicians feel the groove the same way is extremely important.
The event went smoothly thanks to the coordination of faculty member Michael Borroel at the Edgewood Fine Arts Academy. We look forward to continuing and building upon this relationship.
-Submitted by Daniel Anastasio
