Behind the Scenes of Lark's Latest Tour

Kathryn Lockwood: "Off we go - yay!!" says my daughter Surriah. The tour begins with a flight to Nashville, TN.
Caroline Stinson: As we prepare for our first concert at Ward Hall in Nashville, TN, Surriah gives me some stickers! Such a delight to have her with us.	Basia Danilow: Inside Christ Church Cranbrook. This church is absolutely magnificent! It was so peaceful and inspiring and I was glad to have some time to just walk around, reflect and admire the incredible architecture and craftsmanship. I didn't know Debbie was snapping photos! It was exciting to look out into that beautiful space later and see our wonderful audience.
Basia Danilow: We only had one day without a concert but still had a flight that evening. What to do, what to do.....? Head to Slows of course! Delicious! Just the thing to warm up on a cold rainy day and a snack of leftover Slows chicken on the flight later was undoubtedly better than pretzels! Love this place, and their sauces!
Caroline Stinson: Basia and I checking out the natural sponges at the Sponge Docks in Tarpon Springs, FL on the day of the last concert.
Kathryn Lockwook: Yousif looking pretty relaxed hanging out with four pretty girls! We once again enjoyed our ongoing collaboration with him.	Deborah Buck: Here I am back stage warming up for the Tarpon Springs, FL concert. Kathryn knows I hate my picture taken, but caught me anyway! My smirk says it all. I am trying, however, to accept the fact that pictures are good things, especially for family and friends who are often far away.

Finding Comfort in the Quartet

by Debbie Buck 

"performances have provided a creative 
distraction from a rather worrying time in my life."

It has been an especially pleasurable beginning to the Lark Quartet’s fall season of rehearsals and concerts. This time around, what strikes me as a very different experience, is that this past six weeks of rehearsals and performances have provided me with a creative distraction from a rather worrying time in my life. (I have had close family challenged by health issues.) Whether it has been our slow and careful tuning for intonation, or ideas shared about color, character, and blend, the string quartet rehearsal process continues to allure me. It may be a tad funny to admit that there is nothing I find more challenging than string quartet work. In such a constructive and gratifying way, the ensemble challenges have whisked my mind off to a very creative and focused place for many hours of the day.

The Lark Quartet with fan Clint Macgowan 
at the Heritage Concert.

At our first concert of the season at the Heritage Village Concert Society series in Connecticut, we performed for the first time Haydn’s String Quartet Op. 20/2. I cannot recollect another performance where I felt in such a true way, the sensation of being both an engaged participant as well as audience member. I believe that my realization of what the quartet experience was actually doing for me, made me much more aware of being in the now. This is something I hope I will remember for years to come. Being present in the moment despite our life issues is a valuable goal!

Maybe the bottom line here is that I feel lucky and grateful for my experience in this quartet. I know over the years it will continue to serve as a beautiful way to spend my life, especially with such fabulous women: Kathryn, Carrie, and Basia.

Deborah Buck - Violinist of the Lark String Quartet

Re-entry After a Summer Afternoon

Taken by Basia in Vermont

by Basia Danilow

“Summer afternoon – summer afternoon; to me these have always been the two most beautiful words in
the English language.”

- Henry James 

“Re-entry” is my word of choice to describe delving into fall and the concert season ahead. Although summer is full of wonderful music, it does take us out of our routine, often to some beautiful places where we can enjoy a more relaxed atmosphere. We are able to spend unhurried time with family and friends and somehow, there seem to be more hours in the day. Certainly, more daylight hours!

Though the Lark Quartet spends a huge amount of time together, during the summer we also spend time apart, performing, directing and teaching at our various festivals. This allows a great opportunity to connect with other colleagues and have different musical experiences. These opportunities help to generate new ideas, refresh, and re-energize. It also has the wonderful side-effect of renewing my already great respect and appreciation for my Lark Quartet colleagues.

A relaxed, refreshed, re-energized and renewed "re-entry". These are all good things as we ease ourselves, and our families, back into familiar routines, plunging into rehearsal and preparation for a busy, exciting concert season ahead!

Basia Danilow - Violinist of the Lark String Quartet

Upcoming Concert
7:30pm Sunday
September 21st, 2014
Heritage Village Concert Series
Southbury, CT
View the full Lark Quartet Concert Calendar

My Summer Love Affair with Brahms

by Kathryn Lockwood

There are moments when I'm playing Brahms that I feel my toes curling with a delicious sensation of pleasure. Does that sound too racy for a blog? Perhaps it is, but isn't that the response music elicits in you? There are scientific studies proving the affects of music for helping reduce pain and anxiety, lower blood pressure and stress levels, and studies to prove that music can heighten and arouse emotions. 

For me, really good music elicits excited and pleasurable responses and keeps us coming back for more. This is why when the voices of doom say that classical music is dying, I think they are wrong. When audiences are exposed to great music and have the chance to become familiar with it, they're hooked. 

Johannes Brahms

The German composer Johannes Brahms who lived from 1833-87, the composer who was such a perfectionist that he would destroy some of his writings and left others unpublished, the man who never married, and the man that I suspect I wouldn't particularly like if I'd ever had a chance to meet him, is my current summer beau.

When I'm playing his music, I feel a huge amount of admiration and awe. The way the he crafts his music is truly amazing and takes us on an emotional journey of happiness, passion, grandeur, sadness and despair. 

This past May, I was lucky enough to perform the Brahms Viola Quintet in G Major with my Lark colleagues and Toby Appel, and it reawakened my love for the great romantic composer. 

Take this example of a personal "toe curling" moment:

Excerpt from Brahms' Viola Quintet in G Major.

At the piano espressivo, a gorgeous rising line of anticipation begins and we feel fully gratified at the release and the subsequent forte - this is where the toes curl!!!  Ahhhhhh...

Then there are the other precious moments that one can practice and play over and over again, never growing tired of trying new ideas in an effort to fully honor the writing. Take the opening of the second movement.  Big yum.

Excerpt from Brahms' Viola Quintet in G Major.

My next delicious Brahms experience is his B-flat major sextet that I play for a festival in Australia. Life is good.  

Kathryn Lockwood - Violist of the Lark String Quartet

Leaving Our Mark.

by Caroline Stinson

Most of the time, we are all so involved with booking concerts, organizing programs, preparing for concerts, rehearsing, etc., that we spend little time thinking about what, as performing artists, we might be leaving behind. In an inherently impermanent art form, it’s good we don’t spend much time thinking about this, since there is very little we can leave behind except an experience, a feeling, possibly a transformation or just an increased interest.

The two exceptions to this impermanence are recording and commissioning. The first is obvious – we put down our (hopefully) best playing in a form that can be accessed “forever”. Those bold enough, or brave enough, will record live concerts to “leave” as a sense of what it is like (and will have been like) to hear them perform live. As the big recording industry shrinks, the smaller industries grow, and now everyone can leave their work behind by recording for smaller labels, creating their own labels, or for that matter, just posting things on YouTube. 

"Balance is everything..."

Commissioning is more … indirect, perhaps. But in the end can reach farther, especially if we explore two different sides of the experience. The first is as commissioner, and the second is as performer programming other people’s commissions. I begin to truly appreciate the impact of others commissions when I’m performing old new music. Not looking for the next new thing, not performing established works, of this century or otherwise, but finding works that suddenly pop up when you’re looking for, say, works that explore ... I don’t know… nautical themes. Or when you really want to complete a mixed program with a little cello and clarinet duo. Or when you want to focus some time on works for solo violin from the 70’s from various countries. Doing this kind of exploring and programming means that you begin to notice certain names popping up, over and over again. And you begin to realize that though our performing art may be impermanent, with commissioning, we help create a rich, and shared history in the repertoire. Therein lies a responsibility to ourselves, to what we believe in musically, and whose music we want to support and promote.

A name that has popped up for me recently? My colleague at Juilliard, wonderful musician and human being, André Emilianoff. Personally and then through the DaCapo Chamber Players and their extensive commissioning history, I have performed at least 3 works recently written for André – Très Lent by Joan Tower, Martin Bresnick’s Ballade, and I am now learning Shulamit Ran’s solo cello work from the ‘70’s Fantasy Variations. What wonderful additions to the repertoire these are, and what better way to be able to honor a colleague, and the composers, than to play “his” pieces. My students often want to play pieces they hear me perform, and quite simply, this is a big part of how a piece continues in the repertoire. 

So we need to be thoughtful about whom we commission. But I’m also saying that we have a responsibility to explore the less recent more, know the repertoire better, and be more curious about those “traces” left by others. As Commissioners we have a responsibility to foster unique, crafted works, and to play them as much as logistically possible. As Performers, we need to look backwards over the last 50 years, say, and give other people’s commissions another shot in the concert hall with a different voice– let them sound out and see what comes back. How else will we help establish what is here to stay over the next 50 years? Balance is everything –and the amount of music we can choose is staggering. What better reason could we have to be more curious and more discerning at the same time?

Caroline Stinson - Cellist of the Lark String Quartet

So we don't just play music?

"I confess, I still have a flip phone..." 

by Basia Danilow

Upon joining Lark, I had a one of my then new quartet colleagues gently inform me that there would, at times, be quite a lot of administrative work involved. Having been a member of several groups before as well as having a husband who has run a music festival for over twenty years, I was not surprised. I thought I was fairly well aware of what was required.  It turns out I was, well…..sort of.

Sometimes, it seems there is no end to what needs to be done. Other times, there is a bit of a lull before it all starts up again. From Kathryn’s previous blog, one can see all that goes into putting out a CD, (whew!) but what about just the general day to day business of being in a quartet?

Beginning with the obvious, we discuss and choose repertoire, create programs, schedule rehearsals, confirm concert and project dates…. and everything goes into a Google doc and onto the Google calendar for easy reference.  So far so good, but wait….there is so much more! Below is a list of just a few.

• Be in constant communication with our manager as well as presenters, check dates/programs, book dates, arrange travel etc.
• Organize educational/outreach programs.
• Maintain and update Google calendar. 
• Maintain and update our website/ Facebook/ Twitter (and blog!).
• House and maintain the Lark library, copy/scan/purchase music when necessary. 
• Research/apply for grants.
• Research composers/commissions. 
• Organize, schedule and prepare agenda for board meetings. 
• Organize and prepare for photo shoots. 
• Keep track of finances/prepare taxes.

Lark’s approach to keep things running smoothly is “divide and conquer”, though we do have a bit of help with some things (thank you, Jamie and James!) I confess, I still have a flip phone and would much prefer to actually speak with a person rather than text them.  Fortunately, my colleagues patiently put up with this, though it can occasionally result in much more time at the computer, catching up on emails etc.

In the end though, all of this work allows us the privilege of continuing to explore, perform and coach great music on the highest possible level, which is after all, what we love and the reason we joined a quartet in the first place!

Basia Danilow - Violinist of the Lark String Quartet

What does it take these days to release a CD?

Lark during a recording session with Yousif Sheronick

by Kathryn Lockwood

It's so great to have a brand new CD released. The many hours of hard work that you and your colleagues have invested is now in print for the world to hear. When you think about it, your heart gives a little jump with excitement and nervousness.   

So what does it take? 

The journey from discussing an idea about your next CD to having a printed CD in hand is a long one. It's rare these days to be offered  a chance to record a disc, with all of the details taken care of so that you can "just show up and record".

So how does a group get a CD out there without one of those offers?

Here's how!

Sometimes the long sessions require help. Coffee Jeremy?

1. Come up a great program with fabulous guest artists that everyone can become excited about. √

2. Find a record company that is interested in releasing your creation. √

3. Book a fabulous recording engineer. √

4. Book a venue - multiple days. √

5. Start fundraising. √

WAIT - how does one do that?

Lark used several paths to reach our fundraising goal. We successfully applied for a Copland Grant (yay!), we were lucky to have a Pultizer Prize winning composer organize a grant from his University (Thanks Paul!), great board members, and lastly KICKSTARTER.

6. Kickstarter turned out to be a lot of work, but in the end it was worth it.  This is what it took:

Love doing those mailings!

a) make a video (which really means bugging everyone to look into the camera and talk). √

b) work out edits down to the second to save money.  √

c) find video editor (sometimes you have to find more than one as it turned out - urgh). √

d) submit to kickstarter for approval.  √

e) choose rewards and launch campaign. √ 

f) harass friends and family to back your campaign. √

g) bite fingernails until goal is reached. √

h) celebrate when goal is reached. √

i) spend more hours than you can imagine organizing mailings. √

j) go to the post office and mail everything. √

7. Send final edits to Record company and wait for it to be printed and released (thanks Bridge). √

8.  Wait for reviews to come in. √

So now that the CD is in hand and out "there", the question is - did I spend more time rehearsing for this CD or did I spend more time organizing and following through for it?

Perhaps it was 50/50. . . . . .

I guess that's what it takes these days!

Please check out our new Lark CD - we're very proud of it:

COMPOSING AMERICA on Bridge Records

The Album

John Adams: 5 Pages from John’s Book of Alleged Dances with Yousif Sheronick, percussion
William Bolcom: Billy in the Darbies with Stephen Salters, baritone
Aaron Copland: Two Pieces for String Quartet, Lark Quartet
Paul Moravec Piano Quintet with Jeremy Denk, piano

View on the Bridge Records website

- Kathryn Lockwood, Violist of Lark Quartet