Marc van Vugt and The Curious Badger

This week's episode is unusual because 4 musicians are featured, the members of the Euclid Quartet. They are a world-class string quartet celebrating their 25th anniversary with a fantastic album of short pieces, entitled Breve, and we are featuring several pieces from that album as part of this episode. Breve album: https://breve.hearnow.com/

You’ll get to know each member of the quartet, which is in residence at Indiana University South Bend: Jameson Cooper, violinist and founding member originally from England; you’ll hear about his experiences as a student of Dorothy Delay, and Roland and Almita Vamos. He also talked about the formative years of the quartet and the nuts and bolts of learning repertoire. The other violinist in the quartet is Aviva Hakanoglu, who holds degrees from Harvard, Indiana University and Stony Brook university and was a student of Philip Setzer, and it was really interesting to hear about her experience auditioning for the quartet and her perspectives on community outreach and as an educator. Violist Luis Enrique Vargas is a long-time member of the Euclid quartet, and started his life in music in Venezuela at the age of 14, and spoke about introducing Latin American composers to his colleagues. Finally cellist Justin Goldsmith is the newest member of the quartet. When he was completing his Master’s degree at Indiana University he formed the Vera quartet which held residencies at both IU and the Curtis Institute of Music, where he was also a Community Artist Fellow. I was curious to learn more about the many roles the quartet plays in their capacities as performers, educators and collaborators, and to hear them speak about the special joys and challenges of being members of a full-time quartet.

Like all my episodes, you can also watch this on my YouTube channel, and I’ve also linked the transcript to my website: https://www.leahroseman.com/episodes/euclid-quartet

Euclid Quartet website: https://www.euclidquartet.com/biography

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Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(04:46) Jameson Cooper, getting into chamber music, putting the album Breve together

(08:12) Luis Enrique Vargas Latin Amercian composers

(10:07) Metro Chabacano by Javier Alvarez

(14:05) American Masterpieces grant, diversity of representation in programming, youth outreach

(16:50) the career of a string quartet incorporating outreach and education, Rehearsing Philadelphia

(21:22) intro to Italian Serenade, Aviva on the challenge of recording

(22:29) excerpt from Italian Serenade by Hugo Wolf

(23:45) rehearsal process

(25:20) Jameson the early years of the Quartet, Aspen

(29:58) James Cooper studies with Dorothy DeLay, Roland and Almita Vamos, Masao Kawasaki

(33:45) intro to Shostakovich Polka

(36:18) Shostakovich Polka

(36:16) Aviva audition experience joining the quartet

(42:18) Aviva’s advice for dealing with nerves

(43:40) orchestral auditions and chamber music auditions, Jameson Cooper’s experience as a conductor

(47:48) please support this series!

(48:27) Luis conducting project, his love of whistling

(51:55) Aviva intro to Four, for Tango

(53:22) Four, for Tango by Astor Piazzolla from live performance

(58:23) Hugo Kauder

(01:00:56) Luis Enrique Vargas how he became a violist

(01:03:15) Justin Goldsmith experience of joining the q