PBS Wisconsin Music & Arts

Funding for Music from Madeline Island

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Focus Fund for Young Performers and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.

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There are so many things that are so special here.

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The physical beauty of the place is really magical. There's nothing like going for a walk, seeing the water, seeing the sunshine, and feeling the nature around you. It feels very isolated, and it's kind of easier to focus sometimes compared to, like, the hustle-bustle of a city. The integration with nature in the setting is really inspiring. I was really looking for a summer where I could just completely be immersed in chamber music. One of the most appealing things about Madeline Island is how closely we work with professional quartets, people who are out in the world performing constantly and have learned how to have a career in chamber music. The biggest reason why I wanted to come here was the exposure to people of different cultures. That kind of cultural interaction I feel like is extremely positive in my growth as a musician, and it's been something that I wouldn't trade for anything. One more time. You take these individuals that have never met each other before, coming from various parts of the world with different backgrounds, different ages, different interests, and you put them in a room together for the first time, and... magic happens.

"String Quartet Op. 59, No. 3" (Razumovsky IV. Allegro molto) Ludwig Van Beethoven

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Madeline Island Chamber Music started in the mid-'80s, as a couple people's dream to start having music in a music camp up here on Madeline Island.

"String Quartet No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 9: IV. Molto vivace" Diogenes Quartet

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Now it really is a major chamber music festival for serious musicians. We have students that come from many of the top music schools across the country, and also internationally. I think we had 225 applications for 48 slots this year, so it's competitive to get into this program. We attract a world-class faculty that are out there performing, and they're great role models for our students. This is where you need to apply as much possible weight. But timing-wise... - I think timing-wise. Okay. - Yeah. There has just been so much interaction between the faculty and the students, which has been very unique compared to some other festivals I've been to. We arranged a piece, a medieval piece... They're committed to sharing the journey that they've had, and the life experience that each of our faculty brings becomes the fabric of our program. We get a new string quartet every week that has unique values and interests and ways of playing, and that's a really incredible experience for all the students. Each coach has something extremely unique and beneficial to bring to the table. Experiencing that, I feel like I've changed so much as a player, even in a short period of time.

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We have intense rehearsals, we have daily coaching sessions with the mentors, we have lessons, performance opportunities. Every student gets to perform at a master class. Every student gets to perform on student concerts. Concerts are amazing, and when you think that they start their work together on Monday, and then on Saturday, they put together these performances that could be put on in any major concert hall around the world...

"String Quartet Op. 41, No. 1" (III. Adagio) Robert Schumann

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This week, we have as our ensemble-in-residence Brooklyn Rider, which is... probably one of the coolest string quartets in the country right now, if not the coolest. And in many ways, they are the best role models for today's young people. There should be a way that you guys close your eyes, and without having to cue, you should be able to come in totally together. Brooklyn Rider lives both in the traditions of our profession, and at the same time, they're presenting new music that was just written literally yesterday.

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One of the inherent dangers of the string quartet tradition, which has a few hundred years behind it, is things that are that old can tend to get a little musty after a while. I think young people are really inherently interested in what makes something new and fresh and interesting to listen to. And they stand when they perform. They read their music off of iPads. Everything that they do is a little nontraditional, is sort of iconoclastic, but then they also perform incredibly beautifully. They have a very unique sound. They like to do a lot of modern music and nontraditional classical music in their concerts as well to invite in new audiences, which I think is really wonderful.

"String Quartet in G Major, K.387" (IV Molto Allegro) Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

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Nick Cords, the violist of Brooklyn Rider, also was one of our students here quite a few years ago. I don't remember many specifics from those days. I remember that I developed a love of chamber music here. In 245, just be a real stinger, you know... We think it's just really special to be able to say to those students, "Look, that could be you!" Can we start right on 239? A lot of that was really good. And I don't think this is about mastering the art of string quartet playing. I think it's about being on a journey, and, for me, I think the journey of string quartet playing kind of began here at Madeline Island.

"String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 29" (Rosamunde, III. Menuetto) Franz Schubert

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Bell Street Gallery is just a wonderful little venue for us. They have many local musicians and artists that are showcased there. So we arrange for student quartets to go there during happy hour. A fantastic environment for our students because it embodies everything that this island community is. It's a little bit indoors, a little bit outdoors. I've never really done something quite like this before, so I think it's really neat. You're surrounded by art. There's beautiful pottery and paintings and just beautiful art all around. They're interacting with the audience in a different way, rather than being in a really formal setting. And we kind of get to feel a different vibe from the audience and see what they're responding to. We get to talk to them a little bit, introduce the piece. It's really relatable. That sort of exposure is great for classical music.

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It's kind of cool to go from just being another person in the gallery, and then, suddenly, you assume the role of the performer. And they also have to be ready for anything that's gonna happen outdoors, whether it's a siren or... a crazy windstorm.

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They just have to deal with it, and that's what makes it really unique.

"String Quartet in F Major" (IV. Vif et agit) Maurice Ravel

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The students studying chamber music learn lifelong skills. If you think about a chamber ensemble, there's incredible commitment to collaboration, responsibility to communicate, problem-solving, and there's incredible dedication that is required in order to make the ensemble work. Starting off the first week, we had to figure out how each person in the quartet works, 'cause we all come from very different places and different backgrounds. The hardest part about being in a quartet is working together, and when we criticize each other, it's really hard not to offend them. We're supposed to be able to take criticism well but also be able to say them well. I've learned a lot about how to incorporate the techniques that I'm working on into a group setting... how to use those techniques to work with other people and come together to create a big group sound from four people.

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You have to learn how to work with people. It's not just about yourself, but it's about this collaboration, the collaborative aspect of performing, which is listening to your peers, getting insight from them, learning how to play with others-- all those people skills that also come into play when you play chamber music. I think that's a very unique thing about it.

"String Quartet Op. 18, No. 2" (II. Adagio cantabile) Ludwig Van Beethoven

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We're really lucky to have one of our staff members be sort of an expert on physiology and on wellness and injury prevention. Musicians are athletes of the micro-muscles. I do injury prevention and group fitness, and I do that usually outdoors, where we can just enjoy the scenery. We're kind of athletes in our own way, and so we have to condition, just as a normal athlete would. What Meghan is striving to do is to help these students learn how to take care of their bodies in good ways, so that they don't become injured. I use a combination of dynamic stretches, dynamic movements, and resistance band strengthening movements. Overhead. Sometimes, when you're playing solo or chamber, if your body isn't balanced, the sound can kind of waver. We all think about our own hands, but we also have to think about our whole body, and her exercises helped us a lot with that. No matter how great you are on your instrument, if you don't do things to compensate for the imbalances that are in your body after eight hours of playing, you risk getting injured.

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So even just, like, sitting with good posture in the same place for, like, five, six hours-- that's really tiring for your body...

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And, like, holding your instrument up-- like, she's got guns from that.

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"String Quartet in G minor, Op. 10" (IV. Trs modr) Claude Debussy

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Madeline Island Chamber Music commissioned a piece to be written by the composer Caroline Shaw for Brooklyn Rider. Caroline Shaw is this incredible young composer. She is the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music. So I've actually known her since she was about that tall, and she would come to our concerts. I mean, she's just a-- an amazing composer who has, I think, at her very heart-- her very compositional heart-- is a string quartet. And Brooklyn Rider thought that it would be meaningful in the context today, to engage new composers and get them to write with their perspectives on healing in music. It's a project called "Healing Modes" and it's using Beethoven's Opus 132, his great, late string quartet. We have five composers who are writing for this project to shed light on what healing in music means in today's context. First of all, it was just great having her here because we got to play it for her before the performance and have her do some last-minute tweaks based on how it was coming across to her, so that's the lab aspect of having a living composer there. We only got the piece on Tuesday, and so there truly was a wet-ink feeling to what was going on, but actually, that is totally a part of the tradition-- you know, playing the music while the ink is still drying on the page. They are fearless as a group. Brooklyn Rider is just fearless and very, very good with contemporary music, so I know it's gonna be terrific.

Brooklyn Rider plays "Schisma" by composer Caroline Shaw

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These students are unbelievably remarkable. They're also regular kids, and that's what's fun, is to see them just being regular kids. They're encouraged to get to know the island, to go into town... We go to town a lot on the weekdays during free time. We went to the beach and went canoeing one day. There's a lot of walking, more walking than I've done, like, in my entire... life, probably.

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We've walked downtown to get ice cream quite a number of times.

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Probably too many. And the ice cream is really good on this island too.

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The parade is an incredible tradition on the island here. It's probably the most amount of people we see on the island ever in the year.

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This is a different setting for performance because we'll have students that are on a trailer. We go down the main street and we play fun music on the float all the way down the street.

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Everyone walks along, sharing and celebrating with the community here. - Whoo! Well, of course, Ping-Pong is what rules here at Madeline Island Chamber Music. Definitely a lot of Ping-Pong at this festival. We've been doing a lot of doubles games, a lot of singles games, so that's been pretty fun. All of our coaches so far have been able to just completely destroy us. Oh. - Whoo-hoo! I learned I need to work on my Ping-Pong game. Something is clearly lacking there.

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Oh! Oh! And they're regular kids during the day, and then when they get on stage and start performing, they just blossom and mature right in front of your eyes into these incredible performers, and it is really fun to see that.

"String Quartet No. 1 in D major, Op. 25" (IV. Molto vivace) Benjamin Britten

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Funding for Music from Madeline Island

was provided by

Focus Fund for Young Performers and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.