Sunday, August 10, 2008

The Flawless Four

I was a little apprehensive about Noah's quartet placement at the SVI. Due to a dearth of violists he was the most experienced chamber music player enrolled this year on viola. When we needed someone to put in a quartet with his vastly capable older sister and another dynamite young violinist, there was really no more logical choice than Noah. I thought, though, that he might be intimidated and lacking in confidence. I turns out I needn't have worried. The quartet, though not ideally matched on paper in terms of levels, experience and maturity, was beautifully cohesive in reality. Noah's musicality, Erin's experience, Nicole's sensitivity and confidence and Nick's all-round balance of good humour and work ethic made for an ensemble that, it was clear from day one, was going to be impressive. Five hours of rehearsing later we ended up with four kids calling themselves "The Flawless Four."

They were set up in a very 'open' configuration for performance due to the constraints of the stage, playing more or less in a row rather than a cluster. The result was that Noah's hard-won habit of communicating visually with his quartet-mates ended up involving a lot of rubber-necking. Watch his head during the last few chords .... oh my, we laughed when we noticed that on the video.

6 comments:

  1. WOW! You sure have two mighty talented children there. If I didn't have the video *I* would not have known it was four "children". Congrats to them for an outstanding performance :)

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  2. Wonderful to see them working together so well - thanks for sharing!

    And glad that the only chromo inspired happening was a bear in the cherry tree, who can blame him?

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  3. Wonderful sound. And you know, rubbernecking is useful when there are bears around. ;D

    BTW... how does the bear hazard connect with the color of the shirts? There *must* be a connection!

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  4. Wow! I love the Flawless Four. They are wonderful. You must be so proud of them! It inspires my kids, too. Thank you so much for sharing. It is great to actually be able to see your kids play their strings. Blessings to you!

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  5. Lydia, the black bear is the black logo. The cherry red fabric symbolizes the cherries on the cherry tree.

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  6. Hurray! More video. DS and I have been enjoying the performances so much. Thanks for posting (and glad the red was for cherries this year ;-).

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