Composition Readings and Workshops

We are huge enthusiasts when it comes to modern composers. Being a collective of performer-composers, we have a unique level of insight and experience when it comes to string quartet composition. In our Young Composers Program, we ran 22 workshop sessions with our 11 student composers. Each student had different needs, but we usually began with technical feedback about whether everything was playable and how to use the instruments most effectively. Then, we discussed musical details to help them realize their vision more vividly, such as how to balance the ensemble so that the main melody is clear. Depending on how far along in the process they were, we asked them questions to help clarify their vision for the rest of the piece. In many of the workshops, this turned into a jam session where we experimented with their themes and showed them all the possible sounds we could create with our instruments. 

This approach of going through the piece analytically, providing feedback and more ideas, and then continuing with experimentation works with student composers of any level and is invaluable to composition students, who have a notoriously difficult time finding musicians to perform their works.