Practical Magic - The Miró String Quartet
By Interview by Christy Barnes, ©2001
Pictures by Christian Steiner
As players and audience members, we all live for the transcendence
achieved through performance: that magical, mysterious sensation
of being transported out of our physical realm of stage and theatre
style seating into some other time and place. When a performance
like that is over, we cling to the silence before the applause,
reluctant to leave our altered state. We can feel it in the room,
and in our bodies: a connection, the powerful bond of shared experience.
Such performances are as perhaps they should be rare. And for those
capable of producing them, it is a struggle to do so consistently.
Enter my fascination with the Miró
String Quartet.
It was the summer of 1996 when I first heard the newly formed American
quartet perform at The Banff Centre for the Arts. They played the
Schubert Quartettsatz. I couldn't take my eyes off them: four bent
figures, bowing furiously on the Margaret Greenham stage. They gave
me goose bumps.
I didn't know at that time that these four young players, all in
their early twenties, had, only a month or two before, taken both
the First and Grand prizes at the Fischoff National Chamber Music
Competition in the States. Nor did I know they had won First Prize
at the 50th annual Coleman Chamber Music Competition the month before
that. It wouldn"t have mattered to me if I had known, because it
was clear to me from that one performance that the Miró Quartet
had that thing we're all looking for, that aforementioned transcendent
quality most of us long ago gave up trying to describe and now refer
to, simply, as 'it'. What I wanted to know was how they had
achieved it, and why they could do it better than most.
The quartet returned to Banff in August, 1998 to participate in
the 6th Banff International String Quartet Competition (BISQC).
I was there in the audience, with goose bumps once again. They won
First Prize. But more importantly to the Miró, they also
received the Pièce de Concert Prize for their performance
of a specially commissioned work by Canadian composer Chan Ka Nin.
That was our goal, all four members speak simultaneously during
our interview in Banff this January. The Quartet is back at The
Banff Centre this time to record a cd part of their prize for winning
BISQC and as faculty for Music & Sound's Winter Long Term Residency
program. Gathered in the lounge of the Sally Borden Building, the
quartet, dressed in concert attire, is relaxing prior to their evening
performance of Janáeks Kreutzer Sonata. When I ask how the
quartet got started, the group seems eager to reminisce.
We did a lot in a short time, says violist John Largess, the quartet's
newest member, having joined the group in 1997. Looking back it's
a little frightening, but we worked really hard. It still does kind
of boil down to hours. I mean, we rehearse six days a week, at least
three and a half hours a day.
The first goal was the competition. That was the first thing that
got us really going, first violinist Daniel Ching admits.
Basically we just wanted to learn six pieces that we could play
by the end of the year, adds second violinist Sandy Yamamoto.
And then we set up a good summer before we came to Banff, with
lots of performance activities the Norfolk Festival, Soundfest with
the Colorado Quartet which won the first Banff International Competition,
says Largess.
It was a great way to grow quickly because we had a goal. We had
to learn a balanced assortment of pieces. We had to do Haydn. We
had to do Beethoven. We had to do something gushy romantic and something
more medium romantic. We had to do the premiere piece we had never
done anything like that before.
While winning the Pièce de Concert prize was one of the
group's explicit goals, the quartet members all agreed that winning
was less important than simply doing their best.
One thing I was also proud of was, we really tried Largess cocks
his head to the side to think, we weren"t going to kill each other.
We were going to have a happy week. We were going to have fun playing
and play for the audience every time and enjoy doing it, and we
really did.
Says Yamamoto, We limited our rehearsals to two hours a day. And
we would hear everyone practicing and rehearsing and we were like,
No. Let's go and enjoy the outside. The quartet maintains a humble
(and humbling) perspective on what it means to win an international
competition like BISQC.
The thing is, really, and this is not modesty, Largess says, but
all four groups in the final played really, really well, and depending
on what you wanted to hear, you could have picked any group for
any prize.
I think [winning the competition] gave us a little validity in
the music world says Joshua Gindele, the Miró's cellist.
We were trying to do stuff, trying to play concerts before the competition
and it"s just so hard to get any kind of publicity.
Ching agrees, adding that, I think in terms of career advancement,
people told us that what it does is put you on the radar screen.
All of a sudden you're a little blip and they're like, Oh! There"s
a new one!
Competitions like Banff kind of compound with other things, Gindele
explains. Winning one competition doesn't make your career. No matter
what competition it is, if we just won this one prize and that was
it, great. But it was the beginning for us. We had to keep working
a lot afterwards.
I think it also gave us hope just as a group, says Yamamoto. øWe
were just out of college trying to see if this dream could come
true. You know, winning something like that kind of tells you: You
know what? You"re doing the right thing. Keep working, rather than,
you know, maybe you should reconsider.
Perhaps the best reward for the Miró's showing at Banff
was the performance opportunities that subsequently came their way.
Largess explains, Performing a lot in concerts is really what has
made us more confident, more relaxed.
øI feel like we're able to communicate better, Gindele adds. I'd
say thirty to forty percent of the time we're playing, we're playing
for an audience. Before [winning BISQC] it was like three percent.
Talking about performance brings my questions back to the mystery
and the magic of that shared experience between performer and audience.
There's a real sense when you guys perform, I tell the quartet,
in whatever context you perform, that you really love the music.
And you have a story to tell, and in order to tell it, you each
take on the character of the part you play and commit to it fully.
I've watched quartets and usually you just want to close your eyes
and listen, but I can't - I have to watch you guys because
there"s something happening up there that"s greater than just the
four separate individuals.
Thank you, Largess jumps in, can we use that quote?
But what makes that happen? I ask. What makes that possible?
I think a lot of it does happen we actually come together on
stage. Ching replies.
Yeah, more than in rehearsal, adds Gindele. The one thing I was
going to add to the earlier conversation about how we made really
quick progress is that I realize that we"re four completely different
people. And the reason we were able to get all the music together
for the competition is that we were just duking it out every day
until we really figured out a way the four of us, as different as
we were, could work together.
And not be homogenized, Largess explains.
Yeah, so then hopefully when we perform, you see the characters
of each individual within the context of this whole. I think that"s
why we perform [in front of an audience] much better than we do
when we rehearse.
Yamamoto agrees. We don't make all our decisions in rehearsal,
she says. That keeps it exciting too, because we have to play so
much and that makes us really focus.
We had a problem in the recording studio because we do that, Gindele
laughs. Every time we played the piece it sounded totally different.
I mean, different tempi, different colours, the producers were going
crazy. They were like, Come on, and they'd turn the metronome on.
Ching picks the story up. The other day, he says, our producer
had gone through almost all of the stuff she had worked three or
four days straight, twelve hours a day. She came down to the very
last thing she had to edit and she said, Oh, I can't decide on which
take to take. There were four takes and she brought us in and we
all listened to them and she asked which one we liked best, and
we all picked a different one.
So how did you decide? I ask. Actually, we went with the producer,
Yamamoto admits, smiling.
So we decided we're only going to do live recordings from now on,
cause it just stresses us out, Gindele shakes his head, only half
joking.
They kept saying, Oh, your energy level is going down. Do it one
more time, like for the fifth time, Ching adds. We had to keep going
out into the hallway and grabbing live people to plunk down. To
bring into the recording session, explains Gindele. - and then suddenly
it's like BOOM! Ok, we"ll play it again! It's really sad.
We actually sound really bad in rehearsal, it's horrible, Gindele
agrees. But it's good, Largess interjects, you have to be bad sometimes
and then we get on stage and we're like, [whispering] Oh god, there's
people.
Humility and humour aside, the Miró String Quartet is highly
original and effective in its rehearsal techniques, an important
ingredient in any ensemble's recipe for success. And this practical
side of the magic was the focus of the group's teaching on Saturday,
January 27th, when The Banff Centre's Music & Sound program,
under the artistic direction of Isobel Rolston, hosted seven young
string ensembles from the Academy Program at the Mount Royal Conservatory.
Following individual ensemble coaching sessions, the Miró
Quartet gave a rehearsal demonstration in which they asked students
to consider the challenge of learning a piece of music that they've
never heard before. The piece has never been performed, and never
been recorded. Factor in that the piece you're learning is not tonal
like Bach, or Mozart, or Rachmaninoff. It's a piece of new music,
with constantly shifting time signatures and complex rhythmic patterns
which make it extremely difficult to read. Not only that, but when
it comes time to perform the piece, you'll be playing it at an International
Competition, and the composer will be in the audience! This was,
of course, the case when the Miró Quartet sat down to learn
Chan Ka Nin's Quartet #3 in preparation for the Banff competition.
The quartet advises students to put their instruments aside and
learn to vocalize their parts separately, before working on the
piece as an ensemble. Forget the notes. Clap the rhythms first,
then learn to speak them, incorporating tempo and expression as
you go. Start with the most simple and basic concepts of the piece
and work towards the more complex.
It may sound and feel silly at first, Largess admits to the young
players, but it will prevent you from practicing mistakes once you're
working on your instrument, and that saves time.
After learning to speak the part by yourself, you can experience
the process as a group. All this work, still, without picking up
your instrument. The quartet demonstrates by speaking a piece of
new music together as an ensemble. Then they ask the students to
participate, dividing them up into parts and having them follow
along.
By speaking the rhythms and feeling the groove of the work without
our instruments, Yamamoto explains, we can really internalize and
familiarize ourselves with the piece. This way, we are not overwhelmed
with the difficulty of the piece.
They had very good ideas of saving time with practicing, says Isobel
Rolston, who has organized community outreach programs and
worked cooperatively with the Mount Royal Conservatory and other
learning institutions throughout Alberta for many years. By verbalizing
the music first, she observes, you get the swing of the whole thing
and you know what's going on before you have to struggle. You don't
want to struggle when you play the notes. You want to be inspired.
I thought that was very good advice.
On January 28th, the quartet worked with 37 young musicians from
the Mount Royal Conservatory of Music Orchestra, reading Michael
Massey's arrangement of Vivaldi"s Concerto for two violins.
The orchestra was enthralled, says Nick Pulos, Director Conservatory
Strings at MRC, and I was greatly impressed with the way the quartet
worked with the kids. During the rehearsal demonstration I was struck
by the rapport which quickly developed between them and the Miró.
The quartet's enthusiasm was certainly contagious.Ó
One of the questions the quartet is often asked when mentoring
young ensembles is, Do you get along? Rolston is quick to point
out that part of the big challenge for a quartet is to find the
right personalities. You somehow know when you've found the right
combination. They know. Other people know.
One thing I really appreciate about this group, Yamamoto says towards
the end of our interview, is I think if we do screw up in a performance,
no one says,YOU SCREWED UP!! People laugh at you. That's actually
much better. You learn to laugh at yourself and that"s really important,
actually. Largess agrees wholeheartedly.
The thing is, we take this really seriously because it"s something
we really love to do. But you can't love it so much that you kill
it.
That's a big downfall for a lot of classical musicians, Gindele
adds. They're so serious. It's just it's music.
It's just all the pressures you put on yourself that don't help
you, that aren't about the music, Largess says, slouching backwards
in his chair and throwing up his hands. He leans forward again,
intent on making his point. The music itself is wonderful enough
to inspire you to do all kinds of crazy things, to inspire you to
work a lot, to His sentence trails off as though the possibilities
are endless.
Christy Barnes is a music lover, performer and freelance writer
who lives in Banff and works full time at The Banff Centre for the
Arts.
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