The Ying Quartet comes to Slee this weekend

If you were an undergraduate at UB in the late 1960s, a frequently heard complaint from fellow students who were New Yorkers was that there was nothing to do in Buffalo, that it was a cultural wasteland. Well, even in that now distantly past year of 1969, the performance of the Slee/Beethoven String Quartet Cycle of the complete string quartets of the composer who was the greatest master of the form, was already in its 14th season. No other city in America, including New York City, has hosted an annual performance of the complete Beethoven quartets for as long as Buffalo. Thanks to the good taste, the foresight, and the generosity of the late Alice and Frederick Slee, the 53rd annual performance of the complete Beethoven string quartet cycle begins this Friday, October 24 at 8pm in Slee Hall with a concert by the Ying Quartet.

The Ying Quartet

The Ying Quartet is very probably the only currently professionally touring string quartet in the world made up of four siblings. Growing up in a suburb of Chicago, all five children in the family learned to play the piano, but the piano not being conducive to social music making, all five eventually ended up playing string instruments. Timothy and Janet became violinists, Phillip a violist, and David, the eldest, a cellist, while Daniel, who is now a pastor, played double bass. They all studied at separate colleges before arriving at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, where they studied, played, and taught. Encouraged by the members of the Cleveland String Quartet, the Yings formed their own quartet, winning the International Cleveland Quartet Competition in 1989 and the Naumburg Chamber Music Award in 1993.

In 1992, the Ying Quartet was the first musical group to receive a National Endowment for the Arts grant to support chamber music in rural America. Based for around two years in the small farming community of Jesup, Iowa (population 2,000), the group played regularly in community centers, schools, and churches, for audiences of as few as six people as well as traveling for about 60 concerts a year. Looking to gain valuable, low-pressure playing experience as a group, the members of the quartet soon found themselves being interviewed by the New York Times and appearing on CBS Sunday Morning.

Near the end of the residency, both the Yings and residents of Jesup were invited to testify before Congress on behalf of the NEA program. The time spent in Iowa has proven invaluable to the group’s approach to music. According to David Ying, during that time they learned how “to speak and think about our music.”

Now in its second decade, the Ying Quartet has rapidly developed a distinguished career as performers and educators. From 2001-2008, the group was the Blodgett Artists-in-Residence at Harvard University and they are presently ensemble-in-residence at the Aspen Music Festival and quartet-in-residence at the Eastman School of Music, where they lead a rigorous, sequentially designed chamber music program. Besides appearing in conventional concert situations, the Ying Quartet is also known for its unusually diverse performance projects, such as the “No Boundaries” series at Symphony Space in New York City that sought to re-imagine the concert experience, by collaborating with actors, dancers, and non-classical musicians. Buffalo audiences will remember the opening night of last year’s Buffalo Chamber Music Society season when the Ying Quartet combined forces with the nontraditional Turtle Island String Quartet for a memorable performance of an all-string version of Darius Milhaud’s trailblazing La Creation Du Monde. Supported by the Institute for American Music, the Yings’ ongoing LifeMusic commissioning project supports both established composers, such as Paul Moravec, Lowell Liebermann, and Michael Torke, as well as emerging composers in creating music that reflects contemporary American life.

The Ying Quartet’s October 24 all-Beethoven program will be as follows: Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 127, Quartet in F Major, Op. 18, No. 1, and the Rasumovsky Quartet in C Major, Op. 59, No. 3.

Advanced tickets for each of these concerts are $12, with discounts for senior citizens/UB community ($9) and students ($5). Tickets are $20 at the door, with discounts for senior citizens/UB community ($15) and students ($8). Advanced tickets can be obtained at the Slee Hall box office (Monday through Friday, 9am-4pm), the Center for the Arts box office (Monday through Saturday, 10am-6pm), or at any Ticketmaster outlet. For further information, visit slee.buffalo.edu or call 645-2921.

Gift to the Community

In addition to bringing the very best chamber music groups to town in its bargain-priced, Tuesday night chamber music series, the Buffalo Chamber Music Society goes one-step further. The BCMS Gift to the Community is a series of three, free Sunday afternoon recitals in the Mary Seaton Room of Kleinhans Music Hall featuring exceptionally talented young musicians. Most of the performers who have appeared on the series are winners of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, an organization that has a history of finding the next generation of world-class concert performers, with previous winners including artists such as Emmanuel Ax, Pinchas Zukerman, and Dawn Upshaw. This year’s artists are all recent winners of the Young Concert Artist’s coveted first prize. The first concert in this year’s series featured a bravura performance by the very young pianist Jean-Frederick Neuberger. This Sunday’s program at 3pm features Spanish clarinetist Jose Franch-Ballester, who has already played under the batons of Sir Simon Rattle, Mstislav Rostropovich, Yuri Temirkanov, Charles Dutoit, and David Zinman. He will be accompanied by Andrius Zlabys, piano. The program includes Luigi Bassi’s Fantasy on themes from Verdi’s Rigoletto, a late work by Johannes Brahms, the exquisitely lovely Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 120, No. 2, the Sonata in D Major, Op. 94, by Sergei Prokofiev, and the Sonata for Clarinet and Piano by Francis Poulenc. Admission is free.

For more information, visit bflochambermusic.org.