2003-2004…

Before we knew better… Dan is the additional sibling in the middle.

Welcome to the 12^th season of the Ying Quartet! A couple of our most frequently asked questions are: Did your parents plan all of this? How is it that all of you ended up on the right instruments to form a string quartet? The answer is that our parents initially intended to give us all piano lessons as part of our childhood experiences. (Actually, we think that our parents, in addition to doing well in school, wanted each of us to learn to ride a bike, to swim, and to play the piano. Two out of three’s not so bad) The rest of the story is a case of “one thing led to another,” and here we are so many years later, excited about our twelfth year of performing and pursuing our artistic goals together. Back then, when we were so innocently first starting our music lessons, we could never have guessed how much we would be blessed by the many adventures of our career. From our first years spent in rural Jesup, IA, to all of the concert touring, community performances, and teaching we have enjoyed since then, we are just as energized by our vision of making music, in all its wonder, beauty and meaning, a vital part of everyday life.

This season will mark the release of our first commercially available recording! We are working with a British label, and anticipate releasing a disc of our first four LifeMusic commissions in December. These commissions are supported by a grant from the Institute for American Music, and through them we seek to create a musical mosaic that celebrates the diversity of our great country. For each LifeMusic work, we ask the composer to draw his or her inspiration from some dimension of the American experience. So far we have been privileged to receive works by Michael Torke, Kevin Puts, Paquito D’Rivera, Carter Pann, Augusta Read Thomas, Daniel Kellogg, Chen Yi, and Ned Rorem. This season, we premiere brand new contributions from Jennifer Higdon and Bernard Rands. These are pieces of music about the humanity we all share in common, and we make a special effort to integrate this new music into every aspect of our performing activity, both inside and outside the concert hall. Especially in these days, it is meaningful to us to have a way to reflect on what the American spirit is all about. We are pleased by how many times and in how many situations we are able to perform these commissioned works each year for diverse audiences, and we are excited to have begun the process of recording each of them. The first disc will include the works by Puts, D’Rivera, Pann, and Torke.

Also in the area of recording, we are thrilled that a disc of our collaborations with the Turtle Island String Quartet will be recorded commercially in the spring. Our tours and residencies with them last season were some of our most engaging and rewarding artistic experiences, and we look forward to the further development of our collaboration.

This season will feature another two concerts in our “No Boundaries” series at Symphony Space in New York. We began the series two years ago with the idea of questioning the assumptions of a “standard” string quartet concert. Through unusual collaborations and interaction with other disciplines we seek to create presentations that enable the audience to focus on, listen to, engage and interact with the music in new and unexpected ways. Two years ago, we worked with actors reading poetry integrated within the music, and last year we stretched further to include song, dance, video, martial arts and Chinese noodle making (!). This season, we are planning programs that include folk musicians, story telling, and magicians.

We continue to make our home in Rochester, NY, where we are the faculty quartet in residence at the Eastman School of Music. The school has been incredibly supportive to us, creating a department of chamber music that allows us to develop a substantial chamber music program. We take a lot of pleasure each year in teaching our Introduction to the String Quartet, a requirement for all incoming violin, viola and cello performance majors that consists of lectures and demonstrations by us, individual coachings, class recitals, masterclasses and guest lectures. We are also involved with administrating and coaching the regular chamber music ensembles, and with designing a program called, “Music for All,” that trains and sends every enrolled student ensemble out into the Rochester community twice a year to perform for school children and for adults. In the last few years, we created the “Eastman Chamber Music Society” for the most accomplished graduate instrumentalists that emulates the workings of a typical professional chamber music society. We have terrific colleagues at Eastman who help with and contribute to the strong chamber music program. Finally, we are very, very pleased to have been promoted this year to Associate Professors!

In addition to our teaching at Eastman, we are in our second year as Blodgett Artists-in-Residence at the Music Department of Harvard University. Our time there is concentrated into four separate weeks over the course of the academic year. Each week that we spend at Harvard, we are stimulated, refreshed and inspired by the incredible talent of the faculty and students there.

Last and absolutely not least… we celebrate the birth of our first “quartet” baby!! Tim and Cathy had a beautiful baby girl, Elizabeth Anne Ying, on August 19, 2003. You can see pictures of her on Tim’s page.

We invite you and hope that you will join us for this year’s musical adventures.

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SOME RECENT REVIEWS:

“The Ying Quartet is an ensemble of true artists and they proved Sunday by making sense for the audience of a difficult string quartet by Bela Bartok. Not only did the young all-sibling string quartet make sense of Bartok’s 1908 String Quartet No.1, it drew its audience in, enthralling with the work’s lyricism as well as its colorful and strident passion. Bartok’s six quartets, likely the most important written in the 20^th century, remain difficult—for performers as well as audiences—but the Yings spoke the language of this knotty work revealing its sonic beauty. And the audience responded with an enthusiasm normally reserved for traditional virtuoso blockbusters.”

--The Times Argus (Barre, VT), December 10, 2001

“In Rhinebeck…the Yings proved their accessibility in no way affects the elegant brilliance of their executions. The immaculate musicianship of this quartet that literally breathes lines together fuses at a unique level of psychic energy. The vibrancy they sustain in the Mendelssohn, and, most fabulously, in Schubert’s quartet waxes orchestral in tonal luster and sonic dimension.”

--The Daily Freeman (Kingston, NY), October 16, 2001

"The Ying siblings...exemplify the success young instrumentalists of Asian heritage have earned in this country. More to the point, the Yings play with the poise, insight and enthusiasm that makes allies of us all....The Yings were playing with opulent tone in which colors swirled in precisely judged proportion."

--The Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY), April 10, 2000

"...the quartet's stellar interaction and interpretation drew an enthusiastic response.... Spirited playing, impeccable synchronization and astounding grasp of difficult material...."

--The Press-Telegram (Long Beach, CA), January 13, 2000

"Ying String Quartet Nears Perfection With Dvorak: ...the Ying Quartet came as close to the ideal as possible, delivering chamber music of astonishing, refreshing exaltation and exhilaration. Handsomely balanced tone and texture, rhythms living happily within a compelling and interactive framework of tempos, pertinent and unexaggerated phrasing-this performance had it all. And consistently, for all four well-considered movements. Dvorak's Opus 96 is a big piece, and this was seriously big, generous playing. There is an element of luck in laying down in one take a performance that would be a fondly visited favorite in any record collection. But the Yings-a quartet of Chinese-American siblings-have the technique to narrow the odds. Violinists Timothy Ying and Janet Ying, violist Phillip Ying and cellist David Ying produce a warm, flexible mid-weight sound that they wield with great intelligence, accuracy and flair."

--Los Angeles Times, January 12, 2000

"The Beethoven Op.18, No. 5 opened the concert. The quartet is an homage to Mozart's K. 464, and is in the same key, A Major, as the Mozart. Since homage turns to humor here, the Ying got high marks for wit and ease of manner. The final movement was a delight, full of tricky phrases for all the instruments, but performed with real panache and verve. This was very good string playing. They play to make even the dour Beethoven smile."

--The Times Union (Albany, NY), November 21, 1999

"Great Beethoven, beginning to end. Ying players deliver deft exploration of composer's first, last quartets. Comprised of four siblings from Illinois who decided to pool their talents 10 years ago, the Ying Quartet possesses sterling technical gifts and uncommonly mature understanding of music's inner dimensions.... It was in [the] two slow movements that the Ying players reached their highest level of communication. They spun out the Op. 18, No. 1 Adagio, supposedly inspired by the tomb scene from Romeo and Juliet, on tender threads of melody. The sense of tragedy rose to the fore with riveting force midway through, before subsiding again into poignant reflection. The Lento of Op. 135, music that would later serve as a starting point for the heaven-seeking finale of Mahler's Third Symphony, emerged in all of its sublime, prayerlike beauty. You could sense the whole weight of Beethoven's personal trials here, as well as his yearning for a world without pain or pettiness."

--The Sun Sentinel (FL), July 1, 1998

"Youthful and talented, this quartet of three brothers and a sister exerts an enormous appeal before even playing a note. In these times when 'family values' have become political sloganeering the Yings shine by the simple fact of their presence. Watching them perform, hearing their uncommon unity of approach, one cannot help thinking about what music-making could do for real family harmony....They still performed with that seemingly effortless smoothness of ensemble that made every note flow as if the product of a single mind. But that harmony was heightened with a wider emotional palette that included some welcome contrasts. A new edginess in their playing gave added thrust to their interpretations."

--The Albuquerque Journal, June 24, 1998

"...the Ying Quartet...is so accomplished that it could likely perform a random sampling of the repertoire and still emerge triumphant. This is a formidable group of siblings, who brought great intelligence and fervor to all their material....The Yings captured this work's essentials at every shading, poring over the whole work with exceptional concentration and technical mastery."

--The Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY), March 9, 1998

"The youthful ensemble of siblings was elegant and unfailingly unified. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the finale of Beethoven's Quartet in C Major, Opus 59, No. 3, where each player's entrance in the quick fugue presented a challenge akin to climbing onto a moving train. Violinists Timothy and Janet Ying, violist Phillip and cellist David hopped aboard with ease, playing with complete technical assuredness that earned them a standing ovation."

--The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 29, 1997

"...the four unusually simpatico siblings are revivifying the medium of the string quartet with nothing more than inspired musicianship....It was a thrilling interpretation and a further affirmation of the Ying's astonishing agreement in tone, phrasing, interpretation and dramatic essence."

--The Topeka Capital-Journal, April 9, 1997

"These four Midwestern siblings play together with high energy, awesome coordination and precise intonation; they are young, but they have learned all that can be taught about playing their instruments and about performing together."

--The Washington Post, February, 10, 1997

"The Ying Quartet, a celebrated foursome of young Chinese-American siblings with an astounding cache of talent, came to Sun City... It was, to understate it, one of the more memorable string quartet performances of the past few seasons. It's natural enough to expect four siblings to play in close union, producing the seemingly effortless ensemble the Yings evince. What's less expected and more satisfying is the way they do not attempt to forge a unified sound at all times. They play together but not 'as one instrument' in the current overvalued mode."

--The Arizona Republic, April 3, 1996

"...the unanimity of technique and expression the quartet displayed Sunday at Orchestra Hall has less to do with the supernatural than with a clear-eyed vision of what the music means and how best to communicate that to an audience."

--Detroit Free Press, February 5, 1996