Quartets perform at John Waldron

Though the walls were covered with paintings and the shelves filled with ceramics, audio art was featured in the Ivy Tech John Waldron Arts Center Monday.

As part of the “Chamber Music Mondays” series, three different groups performed at 7 p.m. in the Miller Gallery. The event was free to attend.

All performers were students studying with the Pacifica Quartet, the quartet-in-residence at the Jacobs School of Music.

One year ago, the Pacifica Quartet initiated a series of off-campus chamber music concerts to offer more performance opportunities for the student chamber
ensembles they coach.

Later in the semester, the students will play at Rachael’s Café as a part of Classical Revolution, a Bloomington organization that presents classical chamber music performances and readings in informal settings.

They will also perform at the Wylie House Museum and perform privately for residents of Bloomington’s Meadowood Retirement Community. Different ensembles will play at each event.

The first group to take the stage was the Zorá String Quartet, comprised of Dechopol Kowintaweewat on the violin, Pablo Salido Munoz on the violin, Yang Guo on the viola and Zizai Ning on the cello.

The group began with the second movement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s “String Quartet No. 16.”

“Beethoven’s pieces are usually dark,” Munoz said. “But this one is very bright and playful.”

The quartet then proceeded to play all three movements of Bela Bartok’s “String Quartet No. 2.”

During spring break, the Zorá Quartet will travel to the Beethoven Haus in Beethoven’s birthplace of Bonn, Germany, as part of IU’s Advanced Quartet Studies Fellowship.

The group won the week-long residence in a competition through the music school.

The second group to perform consisted of sophomore Kuan-yi Lee and freshman Katherine Kobylarz, the only duet of the evening.

The two students played the first two movements of Sergei Prokofiev’s “Sonata for Two Violins.” According to Kobylarz, the composer’s inspiration was unorthodox.

“Prokofiev wrote in his autobiography that he heard an absolutely horrible two-violin sonata by an unnamed composer,” she said. “After that, he made it his goal to redeem the genre.”

After the violin duet came the final group, consisting of Jenna Barghouti and Joy Vucekovich playing the violin, Ben Wagner on the viola and Graham Cullen on the cello. 

They began with the second movement of Mozart’s “String Quartet No. 19,” also known as “Dissonance.” 

“A lot of the dissonance is in the first movement,” Barghouti said. “But there are small patches in the second movement as well.”

They proceeded to play the first two movements of Bartok’s “String Quartet No. 4.”

Pacifica Quartet students will begin performing regularly starting March 30 at Rachael’s Café and continue until May 5 when they return to perform at Ivy Tech.