The Quartet at Bandelier National Monument
Hello everyone!
During our time in LA, whenever we would tell people we were headed to Santa Fe, they would invariably gasp and tell us how much we were going to love it! We were given restaurant recommendations (forewarned of our choice of red or green chile at every meal, although no one told us that we would also be given a ‘Christmas’ choice, which was my favorite), scenic roads, and galleries to explore, so we were quite excited to get to Santa Fe. Already on our drive in from the airport, the landscape was strikingly unique, and what I loved were all the adobe buildings so low that the land itself didn’t seem disturbed. After exploring the central plaza area, with all the galleries, shops, museums (visited the wonderful Georgia O’Keefe museum), and restaurants, I could see why we kept getting what we ended up calling, the “Santa Fe reaction.”
Our gracious and wonderful musical hostess for the week was Pamela Epple, an oboe player who has been on faculty during the summers at Apple Hill for many years. Our main concert was on the Serenata Series of Santa Fe, which Pam directs, and held at one of the more unique venues I have ever played in, the Scottish Rite Center, a Masonic Lodge. Even from the outside, the center makes quite an impression with its sheer size compared to the low adobe buildings, pink coloring, and Moorish architecture. Inside, the hall looked a lot like a theater with all sorts of ornate embellishments, symbols, and stars lit up on the ceiling. It was a wonderful venue acoustically, and the program included quartets by Schubert, Sedgwick, and Schumann, and a piece by Hovhaness arranged for oboe and string quartet by Mike, which we performed with Pam.
Another public concert was held at Fuller Lodge in Los Alamos. We did meet a few scientists who really appreciated music and got just a glimpse of the interesting town that seems to center around the National Lab there. Another musical highlight was performing and giving a master class at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. We heard some excellent chamber music groups, and two students applied later that afternoon for the summer! We performed our educational program for some wonderful high school students at the Santa Fe Preparatory School, and finally, we gave a workshop at the Scottish Rite Center where Lenny gave our Playing for Peace™ Demo, and we heard a couple of talented younger musicians.
I was recently at a dinner party, and the guests asked me a few questions about what it was like to play in a quartet and work with other people so closely. Thinking of that conversation prompts me to recount a moment we had on this trip. Lenny sometimes describes having “100% happy moments”, and this was at least near 100% for me. We were on our way back from the University of New Mexico and decided to take a route called the Turquoise Trail. The road winds through hills with a spectacular landscape of mountains in the distance and wide open stretches of land dotted with juniper and pinon. We were driving at sunset, and the sky was lit up with gold-rimmed clouds and twilight colors of purples and pinks. All five of us were in the car in awe of the sights, not saying much, and I was just grateful to be there. Like any profession, playing in a string quartet has its intense moments, but it is our shared experiences with one another, like those “100% happy moments” we’ve had through Apple Hill, and the music itself that makes it all worthwhile.
All the best,
Sarah Kim