Apple Hill String Quartet Bringing Three-day Residency to KSC

The members of the Apple Hill String Quartet will be working closely with our music students for three full days at the end of March, participating in classroom presentations, private string lessons, sectional rehearsals with the KSC Orchestra, coachings with the KSC student string quartet and other small ensembles, and working with composition students in class and in individual lessons. They will also be bringing several masterworks by Beethoven and Mozart to life as part of Professor Joe Darby’s music history course, Music After 1700, and visiting Professor Craig Sylvern’s Audio Recording Techniques class, where they should have some helpful insights to share, since they recently completed their first recording as a quartet.

The residency will begin Monday, March 30th, with a free public concert and brown-bag lunch in the Marion Wood Reading Area of the Mason Library at noon. The Quartet will close the residency with a Music Workshop Masterclass on Wednesday from 2–4 p.m. in the Alumni Recital Hall, where the quartet members and Director Lenny Matczynski will work with our students on their performances.

This is a great opportunity for music students to broaden their knowledge and experience. “For music majors, we cannot get enough of good teaching — and we’re open to working with many teachers in many formats,” said Professor of Music Maura Glennon.  “The more students interact with a variety of musicians, the more they hear and see common threads in their musical studies, no matter their instrument/voice or degree program. To have folks come in to visit and work with us is always inspiring, but we don’t always get to work with guests for more than a few hours; to have them here for three full days helps our students get to know the players as individual musicians and teachers.”   This mini-residency was made possible by generous funding from the Dean of Arts and Humanities as well as a donation from the Department of Music.