String theory: Award-winning Isidore Quartet to play Albuquerque concert

The Isidore String Quartet, one of the world’s premier string ensembles, is coming to Albuquerque Academy’s Simms Auditorium this Sunday, April 13.

Winners of a 2023 Avery Fisher career grant and the 14th Banff International String Quartet competition in 2022, the four met as students at Juilliard and formed their quartet in 2019. They’ve been performing together ever since.

The ensemble’s two violinists, Phoenix Avalon and Adrian Steele, it turns out, have New Mexico ties.

“Phoenix grew up in Santa Fe,” Steele said. “And I actually grew up going down to Albuquerque a lot (from Seattle), because we have family friends down there.”

He is looking forward to returning as part of Isidore’s current tour.

“It’s beautiful,” he said, “and the food there is one of my favorite things ever.”

The quartet will perform works by Joseph Haydn, Billy Childs, Erwin Schulhoff and Antonín Dvorák.

“It’s a super fun program with lots of drama,” Steele said. “There’s also a lot of dance music. I think that’s one of the fun things, especially in the Schulhoff, which has these five different kinds of stylized dances. They’re super vocative.”

In addition to the two violinists, there is a viola player, Devin Moore, and a cellist, Joshua McClendon.

“One of the funny things about our group is that all of us started on violin, and then Josh and Devon both eventually switched,” Steele said.

Steele said the members of the ensemble put their own emotions into all the pieces they perform.

“Part of the beauty of being a musician is being able to take the experiences that you have as a person — and you know music is a reflection on life — and to not only reflect our own experiences, but to create a narrative and a music that can also reflect the experiences of the people that are listening,” he said. “We can create a bond between us as musicians and the community that we are playing for.”

It requires a high degree of emotional intelligence to put authentic feelings into pieces of music written by other composers. It also requires thinking and interpreting beyond what’s on the page.

“Notation only goes so far,” Steele said. “A dotted eighth note from Dvorák might mean something totally different from a dotted eighth note in one of the Schulhoff dances that we’re playing. So, not only are you looking at the music, you’re also looking at the context of the music and the narrative. That’s something that we as a group try to focus on.”

Some pieces have a built-in narrative.

“With Billy (Childs), his piece talks about going through the five stages of grief, and we get to figure out where the music corresponds to those stages,” Steele said.

Over the years, the quartet has developed an intimate connection to the works of the contemporary Grammy-winning composer Childs. They are performing Childs’ “Unrequited” this season, and they will debut a new piece next season that the composer is writing especially for them.

Some compositions are more abstract and open to interpretation. In those cases, the musicians spend time developing their own narrative ideas.

“It’s an adventure with every piece,” Steele said, “to figure out where those narratives are, and how we build them.”

String theory: Award-winning Isidore Quartet to play Albuquerque concert