Glad it was helpful! One thing with this board, I have been as guilty as anyone, most people post with good intent (or I like to think they do), but given how raw peoples emotions are I have inadvertently come off as being critical,was making sure some of my other comments about what music students need wasn’t part of this:)
For those of you who’s kid is/was involved in forming their own chamber group, did they form it while an UG or as a MM or Doctoral student? If as an UG did it disolve when they went to get MM or D degree? Basically, how important is/was forming chamber groups as an UG? Do most successful chamber groups form while in grad school?
I can give your some perspective on it and unfortunately it all depends. If you look at chamber groups (I am familiar through my son with more than a few of them), it is all over the map. I’ll give you some examples:
1)My son’s group formed through a number of different events. 3 of the members met at Taos school of music (which I cannot praise enough, it is fantastic for many reasons, and isn’t that expensive as such). They all then ended up at the same school, my S and two of the other members were grad students, one was UG there. The 4th player who didn’t go to Taos my son met through a friend his first year at grad school when they attempted to form a group that kind of went splat, that person ended up going to the same school for grad school the next year. They started playing together for fun, sight reading music, and it turned into something more, entered a competition almost on a lark, did really well there, and it became serious, and they are still together and doing well professionally, though not the Emerson String Quartet level (yet lol)
2)A group that is now making waves, the Isidore Quartet, all went to Juilliard UG and met there.
3)The Dover Quartet, one of the big names out there, formed at Curtis as UG.
- At least two other groups I know of that are professionally out there, formed via networking after graduation, and that is big, too,two people get together, then one knows someone else, word gets out via the network, they meet other people (I don’t know of any groups who initially formed and got members putting out ‘need a violist for a chamber group’ and auditioning people, it generally is through networks then they try them out)
I would answer like in most of music there is no one path. In the end building a group that has the magic depends on the people, and I would argue that the way groups form from what I know is that the people involve love chamber and they exploit every opportunity to play with other people, and see if it works, and if it doesn’t, try again with other people. If I remember what the Dover and Isidore guys told my son, they too had their trial and error period before finding each other.
Even if a group forms in UG and then because they go different routes doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable, I wouldn’t look at it that way, because unless they split up because they came to hate each other, people stay in touch.If ABCD are in a chamber group, and lets say all go to different grad programs, it could be A finds people where they are in grad school, but need a cellist, A thinks the person from their UG group might be great, they get together at some point and see what happen or the group ABCD re-forms post graduating UG (they might have continued to play together by attending summer programs together, or on their own on breaks and such).
My take fwiw is if a student is interested in chamber music, that they should take every opportunity to do it and if the school puts together groups, by all means do that, but also seek out other people at the school and see what happens, sight read, see how you interact. Likewise try to if at all possible to get to places with chamber music programs in the summer if you can. Some of them are very difficult to impossible to get into because of their orientation, especially as a UG, like Marlborough and Yellow Barn Senior (both as far as I know take only late UG and beyond students), but there are plenty of others out there. It might seem like a cliche, but my son has been at parties with music types where the people there will do sight reading for the fun of it and the participants range from UG to Grad Students to musicians who have graduated figuring things out to people in existing professional groups. They do it because they love music enough, but it also is another way people find other people.
A friend of my son who is in another group kind of described the process as playing gin rummy, where you kind of collect cards (people) you have met along the way, and you kind of end up "winning’ when you can find a winning hand (group) among the people you know or others attempting to help form the group.
One of the big things that makes or breaks a group I am convinced is interpersonal relationships in the group (and the reality that even successful groups implode tells of this), that it really is a fit. They don’t need to be close friends, though that dynamic exists, but they need to musically respect each others vision and be able to work towards a common sound. People assume this is what coaches do, but coaching is a funny thing, because coaching is often contradictory, and the group has to create their own vision (put it this way, no matter how musically talented, a group that is playing the way they are told by a coach/teacher, isn’t going to get very far because they will be cookie cutter, not have their own vision, and audiences pick up on that).
In summary I think that the key with chamber groups is in being exposed and playing with a lot of other players, and finding X people with the same vision (I use string quartets as an example because it is what my son does, but it applies to other groups), and that can happen via a variety of paths as I tried to show. Sometimes the magic works, you let’s say are assigned a group in UG, and the magic works, but it is a lot more common for it to be a process that evolves/happens over time.
Thank you for clarifying this process. I see it as all being an organic process. My D current teacher is telling her to go to a conservatory where there is a good proportion of highly skilled string players do she can start forming those relationships as an UG. She is choosing between two schools. One school she likes the professor a bit better yet that school may not have the best string players.so she has to decide what is more important.
I remember in some BM programs the string players are required to do chamber training for two years. They can form their own groups, or they can ask to be “placed” to a group. My son is a sophomore. He has been in several chamber groups so far. One of them is his “my chamber” with close friends, so close that they rent an apartment together. The others are his “work chambers”. He does not expect any of these groups would last beyond his BM program; however, they will have good understanding of each other (as musician and as colleague) so in later years they may regroup or make recommendations for each other.
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With chamber programs are all over the place how they handle it (and obviously, I know directly of only a very few). Some require multiple years of chamber, others offer chamber but they don’t really put much effort into it, including schools that ironically have some good chamber faculty.
One of the things with chamber (just my opinion) is that the process can’t be forced and it isn’t just about having great instrumentalists. That doesn’t mean they don’t have to be talented and precise players, but it means there is so much else there. I think your S is wise not to put any weight on forming a group coming out of his BM program although if it really looks like it is working , like they have something good, it may be worth looking into perhaps moving on to the next step together. Either go to the same grad school to get an MM (if they can swing it), or into one of the grad residencies out there for chamber groups, that programs like Curtis, Juilliard and other schools have for young groups which might be another option.
It definitely is organic and it isn’t all about having the best string players in the group (note, I mean in the sense that they all have to be potential soloist level players, they still need to be high level players dedicated to playing as well as they can), it is about a lot of factors as I tried to describe. A lot of it has to do with the students in the program and if the students have a passion for chamber. Unfortunately that isn’t easy to tell, chamber to me is kind of alchemy and that is hard to predict. I think the level of students is a consideration, but keep in mind no school is uniform, school A might have more high level players than B, but B might have students who are more passionate about chamber (there are still a lot of students in the string world who see chamber as a fallback rather than their passion). I will give the same advice I have given others, try and find out as much about both programs, and in the end trust a) that your daughters gut feeling that is a combination of logic, advice from others and intuition is right and b)that likely if your D is passionate about music and chamber, that whatever decision she makes will work in the end:).
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Balourdet?
Yes, jazz/tenor saxophone. Visiting next week for a “shadow day.” Is your kid still considering going there? if yes, let’s connect
My son has made longer-term collaboration connections at summer programs. They have started coordinating summer plans although they attend different schools and plan on collaborating in the future.
My son is required to do Chamber but participates in more chamber ensembles than is required since he love chamber. Because he started college having had a strong chamber experience from a summer program they asked if he’d be open to doing chamber starting first semster freshman year, which he did. Typically first semester the BMs don’t have chamber.
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That is great! Do you know what summer programs are worth their weight in gold?
For mine, for chamber, it was CQP, which is a unique environment. I know Madeline Island has a great reputation and have good things about Kinhaven, which is more chill. But I think it depends upon who they get paired with.
You can DM me.
Who is still waiting on appeals, therby delaying the decision?
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Thought we’d hear back from the top choice yesterday because we were told appeal reviews would happen on the 7th but nope.
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Appeals here… yes, the delay is frustrating. I don’t think we’ll be choosing until much closer to the due date.
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Same…we have 2 appeals in. Doubt they will match the offer she received.
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We are! Both because of better offers and because I lost my job a couple of weeks ago, so we lost over 1/3 of our income. We still may not qualify for much need, but we’re hopeful that we’ll make up some of the difference with extra merit + hopefully a little bit of need. We were expecting a couple of full-tuition offers based on what we were told by some of the teachers, but we didn’t, unfortunately. It’s my understanding that a lot of the schools are being much less generous this year.
We appealed at 5 schools based on one state school offer that is hard to pass up but is her absolute last choice school. If we can get any of the other 5 to a number within spitting distance of the state school, she would choose to go there.
One school has said they may not get back to us until almost the deadline to commit, so we’re probably not going to have a decision until the very last minute.
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I also have the experience of schools not being as generous as we were led to believe. It’s been a rather crushing process, unfortunately, and the “safeties” ended up offering less than more prestigious schools.
I am truly sorry to hear about your employment situation. I hope you can gain employment soon!
I do hear you about your daughter’s situation. For us, we told our daughter to apply to schools where she could see herself attending, so she only applied to top tier schools, and also those we thought would be generous with merit, as well as those schools where her current teacher has connections. She did not apply to any safety schools, like state schools. We also tried to warn her to not pick a favorite school, but that was very hard to do. I,myself, was drawn to a few schools. But alas the one she received the most merit from was not originally one of her favorites. So we are appealing. But as time as evolved, she now has the one school that offered her the most merit at the top of her list, after we discussed the pros and cons. Actually she us kind if tired of waiting and wants to just commit…I think to make it easier for her to decide. Like, “Oh well, I like the school now very much and they showed their desire to want me there by offering me the most merit, so let’s just make it easy and commit so I can move on!”
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