The Emma Chase Cafe has hosted jam sessions before. But nothing quite like this.
On March 17, the Chiara String Quartet will play an evening concert at the Cottonwood Falls restaurant. It may be the smallest place that the Juilliard-trained group has ever played, which is just fine with the musicians.
“We sometimes enjoy the smaller venues more because we can feel the audience and feel their energy while we’re playing,” said Jonah Sirota, the group’s viola player.
The concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $10. For those wishing to come for dinner beforehand, a St. Patrick’s menu of corned beef and cabbage or Irish stew, the meal will cost $10 and be served from 5 to 7 p.m. The cost includes the beverage, dessert and tax.
It’s a big deal for a small town. Since going professional seven years ago, Chiara (pronounced kee-ARE-uh and meaning “clarity” or “light”) has played some of the top concert venues both nationally and internationally, including the Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall and the American Academy in Rome.
But this year, the quartet has started alternating between big concert halls and smaller club-type settings. And when it plays a club, Chiara follows the rules of the jazz band rather than the symphony orchestra. The performances tend to be “sets” of different classical compositions rather than a complete four-movement piece. The music may be “old school,” or newer classical works, or even an occasional cover tune. Applause is encouraged at all times, even between movements of a larger piece.
About the only thing they don’t do is take requests. Sorry, but there aren’t many fake books for classical string quartets.
The idea, Sirota said, is to make classical music more accessible, especially for those who don’t usually attend classical concerts.
“You know how it is,” Sirota said. “If you like classical music and you’ve known it for a while, going to a concert hall isn’t the least intimidating. You know the rules. ... But for somebody who’s never come to one, they find the rules kind of intimidating. After the first movement, they may say ‘This is great!’ and start applauding and then see people are looking at them funny.”
The first time they tried the more intimate, less formal setting was in Lincoln, Neb., where the group members are artists in residence and creating a new program in music entrepreneurship. That initial concert at a bar called the Chatterbox went well, but raised a few eyebrows among more traditional classic music lovers — especially since the first group on the bill was an indie pop band.
“One audience member later told us ‘I had to sit through two hours of terrible music to get to hear you,” Sirota said with a laugh.
Chiara had its roots as a student group that got together each summer to perform before two of the current members, violinist Rebeca Fisher and cellist Gregory Beaver, decided to take it a step further and go pro. After a number of different names were experimented with, the name “Chiara” was settled on from the Renaissance painting technique called chiaroscuro, which uses light and dark to create the feeling of depth.
Sirota joined the group while he and the other members were completing a master’s program at Juilliard. The last of the current members to join was violinist Julie Yoon.
Besides performing and teaching music, the members of Chiara also founded the Red River Chamber Music Festival in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The group lived in Grand Forks for two years during that time and discovered what a Dakota winter is like.
“Lincoln gets cold, but not like Grand Forks,” Sirota said.
The group recently was awarded the Guarneri Quartet Residency Award for artistic excellence by Chamber Music America, only the second group to receive that honor.
For now, the four are looking forward to playing in the intimate surroundings of the Emma Chase.
“The nice thing about it is we don’t have to use amplifiers,” Sirota said. “The audience is able to hear you even without it. We enjoy that.”
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