This week, The Banff Centre welcomes the return of the Cecilia String Quartet for the second consecutive year.
The four-member all-female classical music ensemble is here for a three-week residency program, during which they’ll play two concerts.
Both concerts are at 7:30 p.m. in the Rolston Recital Hall. The first will be June 17, with a repertoire of Richard Strauss, Capriccio with Geoff Nutall, Viola and Adrian Fung, Cello; Ludwig Van Beethoven, String Quartet No. 16, Op. 135 in F Major; Antonin Dvorak, Piano Quintet, Op. 81 in A Major with Jamie Parker. The second, June 25, will be a presentation of Felix Mendelssohn, Octet in E Flat with the Afiara Quartet.
The quartet consists of Caitlin Boyle (viola), Rachel Desoer (cello), Min-Jeong Koh, (violin) and Sarah Nematallah (violin). The Outlook spoke with Boyle last week.
“We participated in the residency last summer as well, and we found it was a really great experience to work with some of the mentors that they get to teach us,” she said. “And also, just because of our connection to The Banff Centre, we like to go there as much as we can.
“We find the centre a really great place to learn and to be more inspired.”
The quartet will use their time in the residency to expand their repertoire for the coming summer concert season, which includes extensive touring throughout July and August in Canada and the U.S.
“All of us think it’s a lifelong experience, and especially playing in a string quartet, it’s always good to have an outside ear to help us, to keep track of things and to always continue pushing our performance abilities and things like that,” she said.
Boyle is originally from Dundas, Ont. She began playing the viola at age three at the Hamilton Suzuki School of Music. More recently, she completed a Masters of Music at San Diego State University, in 2009, and a Graduate Diploma at McGill in 2010. In the fall of 2005 she participated in a tour of the U.S. east coast with the Munich Symphony Orchestra.
Her passion for chamber music was fostered at the Southern Ontario Chamber Music Institute and the Domaine Forget Chamber Music Sessions and continued to grow through the support of such artists and teachers as Richard Lester, Terrence Helmer, and the St. Lawrence String Quartet. She has been a member of the Cecilia String Quartet since 2006.
In the fall of 2010, she was admitted to the Doctor of Musical Arts Program at the University of Toronto.
“The quartet formed in the fall of 2004, through the University of Toronto,” she said. “It was for a chamber music credit, and then it just formed from there. It’s just grown every year in terms of building concerts and repertoire and things like that.
“We’re going to a lot festivals and summer camps, doing a bit of teaching, concerts and things.”
Of the other members of the quartet, Desoer is a cellist from Hamilton, Ont. She graduated from Oberlin Conservatory in 2008 with a Bachelor of Music degree. Desoer also attended the Juilliard School, McGill University and rounded out her education at The Banff Centre. Most passionate about chamber music, she has had the opportunity to study with some of the greatest chamber musicians of our time. Desoer has performed in a wide variety of ensembles and musical styles and she is honoured and excited to be the recently appointed cellist of the Cecilia String Quartet.
Korean-Canadian violinist Koh joined the Cecilia Quartet in 2007. Previously, she was a top prize winner of the 2006 Eckhardt-Gramatté Competition, where she was also awarded the Prize for Best Performance of the Commissioned Piece, a winner of the Galaxie-Rising Stars Program from the CBC, the Kathleen Parlow Concerto Competition, and the Felix Galimir Award for Chamber Music Excellence. More recently, Koh was a winner at Canada Council’s 2009 Musical Instrument Bank Competition for the Arts, which won her the use of a circa 1767 Joannes Baptista Guadagnini violin.
Nematallah has been delighting audiences with her violin play since the age of three. In 2005, she was awarded the University of Toronto Felix Galimir Chamber Music Award as a founding member of the Cecilia String Quartet. She has appeared as a guest soloist with the Brampton Symphony Orchestra, Mooredale Chamber Orchestra and Cathedral Bluffs Symphony Orchestra on several occasions. She plays on an 1851 Jean Baptiste Vuillame on loan from an anonymous donor.
Boyle had much praise for her bandmates.
“I really like my colleagues,” she said. “It’s such an intimate thing to do with three other people because we rely on each other so much, in terms of everything. In terms of the music, you just have four fairly different people coming together and I find it really great to be working and able to discuss musical ideas and matters.
“We each play our own parts, but at the same time we are a collective unit, so we’re doing something together.”
Touring is the best part of the quartet, said Boyle.
“Travelling is great, we meet so many great people on the road, like concert presenters and the people that we’re billeted with, and it’s great to play in the different halls and to meet other people who are really excited about chamber music too and sharing that experience,” she said.
“Concerts are really fun because I love being able to hear the audience listening to us, and it gives us a different kind of energy. We need the audience there in order to share in that experience.”
For their repertoire, the quartet will go beyond traditional classical music, said Boyle.
“We do try to play everything, from a Heiden to a Mozart, and then we play the commissioned piece for The Banff Centre that has us strumming our instruments like a guitar and stamping our feet, we go all the way to both ends of the spectrum,” she said.
That said, the classical classics are the most challenging to do.
“Sometimes I feel like there’s more room or freedom for interpretation with modern music, but with music that was written in the 18th century, there’s so many traditions and rules,” explained Boyle. “We try to learn it, but a lot of that music is about the rhetoric, like saying the right thing at the right time and being very witty and sometimes I feel it a little bit difficult to tap into that.”
To learn more about the Cecilia String Quartet or to hear their music, visit their website at www.ceciliastringquartet.com
