Biava Quartet plays second night of Chamber Series

Aspiring young musicians and an audience of all ages packed Auer Hall on Monday night to hear the Biava Quartet play for the second performance of the Jacobs School of Music Summer Music Festival’s Chamber Series.\nPerformers in the Biava Quartet are Austin Hartman, Violin; Mary Persin, Violin; Hyunsu Ko, Viola and Jason Calloway, Cello. \nTheir performance included pieces by Joseph Haydn, Stacy Garrop and Felix Mendelssohn. \nCalloway said the quartet is visiting IU to teach private lessons and coach chamber musicians for the String Academy, a summer music camp for young musicians ages 5 to 18.\nPart of the academy’s curriculum is having the students hear and see professional musicians perform, said Alain Baker, publicity manager for the Summer Music Festival.\nThe Biava Quartet was named in honor of Maestro Luis Biava, “a mentor and inspiration to the quartet since it’s inception,” according to the Summer Music Festival program.\nThe quartet formed in 1998 at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Awards they have received include the Naumburg Chamber Music Award, the 2005 Premio Paolo Borciani and the 2003 London International String Quartet Competitions. \nA piece commissioned specifically for the quartet was Stacy Garrop’s “Demons and Angels.” The piece was first performed by the Biava Quartet in 2006 at Yale University, Persin said.\nGarrop’s piece is based on her ex-fiance, who she discovered was on death row for murdering five people, according to the festival program. The movements of the song – Demonic Spirits, Song of the Angels, Inner Demons and Broken Spirit – show the agony, grief and hope she believed her ex-fiance was suffering while awaiting his death. Broken Spirit, the final movement, represents the alternating feelings of hope and despair the ex-fiance would feel as he pondered his redemption, Persin said.\nAfter the performance, the quartet was surrounded backstage with fans and students praising their performance. \n“For me, performing is like working in a laboratory because you can experiment and take risks every time you perform. It’s exciting to be on stage,” Hartman said.\nThe Biava Quartet will perform again with the Penderecki Quartet at 4 p.m. on June 24 in Auer Hall.