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The Chiara String Quartet circa 2000 in front of a "Smart Car" in Hamburg, Germany
Gregory Beaver, cello; Julie Yoon, violin; Jonah Sirota, viola; Rebecca Fischer, violin
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 The olden days
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Before we hit the professional stage, the history of our time as a quartet is one of intense music-making packed into small chunks of time. In the summer of 1993, Rebecca and Gregory were placed in a quartet through absolute chance at the Musicorda Summer String Program, on the campus of Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley Massachusetts. Rebecca, Gregory, violinist Rachel Noyes and violist Danielle Farina, had never met. After the audition at the beginning of the summer, we were placed together in a quartet by the faculty. Our story began in the basement laundry room of the dormitory, the only place cool enough to concentrate. We began with Schubert's Death and the Maiden string quartet. From the first rehearsal, the intensity of our connection as people and musicians was unlike anything we had ever experienced. We performed the first movement on July 18, 1993.
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At the end of that summer, we parted our ways to the far corners of the United States. In January, it became clear to all of us that we would spend the next summer together again, and we decided to return to Musicorda, and that we would learn Beethoven's String Quartet Op. 130 and Bartok's Quartet No. 1, and try to coach with Norman Fischer of the Concord String Quartet. However, when we arrived, Mr. Fischer let us know a bit about the difficulty of the Beethoven, and we realized that in the 6 week program, we would have only 3 days to learn each movement! Instead, we undertook Beethoven's String Quartet Op. 59 No. 2 in E minor, and performed it both at Musicorda, and at a concert off-campus for which we would need a name. At first, a few possibilities were tossed around such as "Terpsichore," and quickly tossed out. Gregory found "Chiara" in a small music dictionary that said its meaning was "light, pure," and we finally had found our name.
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Times change, and Danielle, who is now a member of the Lark Quartet, took a different path from the rest of us at the end of the summer. So, we needed to find a violist to replace Danielle, and Rebecca suggested Jonah, a lifelong friend. Although Gregory met Jonah at Rice University in Houston, where they were both starting a Bachelor's degree in September of 1994, we did not play as a quartet until the next summer. Through a little luck and the use of recordings from the previous summers, we found ourselves accepted into The Audubon String Quartet's two week program for young quartets at Virginia Tech University, as well as the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival and the Britt Chamber Strings Camp, where we assisted the Cavani String Quartet and received coachings from them.
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 The Chiara String Quartet, 1995
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 Backstage after a performance of Hindemith 3rd Quartet at Aspen
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In January of 1996, we gathered at Rice University to collect ourselves. After two weeks of intense preparation and reacquaintance with each other, we auditioned for and were accepted into the Center for Advanced Quartet Studies at the Aspen Music Festival. We were the only quartet selected that summer to join three returning groups that included the Pacifica String Quartet. While preparing, we made a recording of Hindemith's String Quartet Number 3. At the end of our summer at Aspen, Rachel realized that a persistent playing-related arm injury was not going to disappear, and began to fight with it, so the summer of 1997 was the first we spent apart.
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In September of 1998, Jonah, Rebecca and Gregory began a master's degree program at The Juilliard School, and played for a year with violinist Anna Elashvili. For the first time, the opportunity to work on a daily basis for a long period of time allowed us to gather our forces. After graduating from Juilliard, we parted ways with Anna, who is now a member of the Fountain Ensemble. At this point, we held a nation-wide search for a second violinist, and to our delight, found Julie Yoon right under our noses at Juilliard. We began our career with Julie at the Schleswig-Holstein Musikfestival, where we played two concerts with clarinetist Clemens Trautmann, and pianist Cornelius Meister. Since then, our career has taken off, and you can read all about it on our Bio page.
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 The Chiara Quartet in Emkendorf, Germany
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