Renowned group presents two concerts close to home
A little known gem of the university practices daily in a small office on the east side of campus.
This prize jewel is the Fry Street Quartet, a group of four professors and artists dedicated to music.
The award-winning string quartet, which is composed of Jessica Guideri, violin; Rebecca McFaul, violin; Russell Fallstad, viola and Anne Francis, cello, travels around the country while also balancing the classes they teach in the music department at Utah State University.
“We are lucky because the university understands the synergy that is needed between teaching and performing,” Fallstad said.
Francis said she once had a student express how much he likes seeing his teachers travel and practice what they preach.
“It is appealing to students to see their teacher performing regularly,” she said.
Because the group is sponsored by the Marie Eccles Caine Foundation, it is also a valuable asset to the university as a public relations tool.
The group has played in many venues around the country and world, including last month’s performance at Carnegie Hall and earlier in Jerusalem, where they studied with Isaac Stern, one of the greatest violinists of the century, McFaul said. For the quartet, it was an opportunity of a lifetime.
“He instilled in the group the value of teaching by example and words,” Francis said.
Stern was famous for his love of music and teaching, McFaul said, as well as saving Carnegie Hall from being abandoned.
The group spends $20 each week practicing together, McFaul said. This does not include the time spent practicing on their own and teaching classes.
“Each of us teaches a handful of private lessons and a class,” Fallstad said.
The classes are all done for students through the music department.
The quartet was invited to USU because of a search the university was doing after the previous group had left.
“The string quartet world is very small,” Fallstad said. “Word-of-mouth communication makes it a small community and easier to find groups who are interested in this sort of thing.”
The group visited in March 2002 as part of USU’s search and interview process.
“We worked with the students in their classes and realized Utah State would be nice,” Francis said. “The level of students here was surprisingly high, probably because of the culture and how they are taught music.”
Not only does the group spend most of its waking hours either teaching, performing or traveling, but McFaul and Fallstad are married.
“We are probably together more than any other married couple,” Fallstad said.
McFaul said, “It really isn’t too bad being all together so much. My colleagues are all creative enough to keep us from falling into some kind of rut.”
They all agreed that the weekends are nice though.
“We look forward to doing the laundry,” McFaul said.
One aspect of their job that keeps it from becoming boring at all is the great repertoire string quartets have to work with, Francis said.
“The concert series we are working on takes the progressive works of great composers from their teens and 20s to their masterpieces,” Fallstad said.
Felix Mendelson was a teenager when he was writing his music, he explained.
“He was on the cutting edge of his music,” Fallstad said. “He was the Britney Spears of his day.”
The quartet has two concerts coming up in February. The first is Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. in the Eccles Conference Center, where it will perform a piece written especially for the group as well as other more familiar pieces. There will also be a surprise at the end of the performance if it is requested by the audience, McFaul said.
“We have a lot of fun music to play,” she said. “The piece written for us is very energetic; it has an energetic drive to it.”
They will also be playing Tuesday, Feb. 25 at 7 and 8 p.m. in the Eccles Harrison Art Museum. There they will be performing the Ned Rorem’s Fourth String Quartet which was inspired by a painting by Pablo Picasso.
–jacobomoon@cc.usu.edu
Russell Fallstad, plays his viola with the with ease. The quartet took its name from a street in Chicago where the group used to practice together.
Jessica Guideri, Rebecca McFaul, Anne Francis and Russell Fallstad make up the faculty quartet-in-residence at Utah State University. The group performs almost weekly in many parts of the country. (Photos by Cory Hill)