On the Road with the Tasman String Quartet

Asia-Pacific Competition

2009-07-09T01:34:00.001-07:00

The Tasmans have just come back to New Zealand after competing in the Asia-Pacific Chamber Music Competition, in which we were finalists and recipients of an award for the performance of a post-1989 composition (we had chosen to play Thomas Ades' Arcadiana). Despite our disappointment at not winning the competition, it was a positive experience to play in the stunning hall at the Melbourne Recital Centre for a large and enthusiastic audience, and we'd like to thank the organizers of the competition for making our time in Melbourne so pleasant.

We were very happy to read this review of our performance in the finals by the eminent Australian pianist Ian Munro.

If you are interested, you can hear our performance online at the ABC Classic FM page devoted to the competition.

The New Zealand Herald coverage of the TSQ in the Asia-Pacific Competition can be found here and here.

The TSQ on video!

2009-06-06T03:25:00.000-07:00

Check out this short film about the Tasman String Quartet by film-maker Christopher S. Childs! The first of a projected series of three videos, it begins with a collaborative class in charcoal drawing and quartet playing in the classroom of Auburn art professor Barb Bondy, and culminates with a performance of Schubert's Death and the Maiden at the Gnu's Room bookstore in Auburn.

New Zealand tour news!!!

2009-05-11T06:38:00.001-07:00

We are about to leave for our first New Zealand tour of 2009! (We'll be there again in July...we'll keep you posted.) We hope our New Zealand friends and supporters will check our website for details of our touring schedule!

We're looking forward to doing our first ever concerts in Dunedin, Queenstown and Alexandra, and playing again in Nelson and Dunedin. It'll be the first time the "new" TSQ (with our recently-arrived second violinist Jenny Banks) has come to New Zealand, and we can't wait to bring an exciting programme of works by Bela Bartok, Thomas Ades and Beethoven to our many friends there.

Our touring schedule for May is:

QUEENSTOWN Saturday May 23, 7.30pm, Thomas Brown Art Centre
ALEXANDRA Sunday May 24, 3.00pm, Alexandra Community Centre
DUNEDIN Tuesday May 26, 5.30pm, Marama Hall
NELSON Thursday May 28, 7.30pm, Nelson School of Music
WELLINGTON Sunday May 31, 3.00pm, Ilott Concert Chamber

We hope to see the smiling faces of our friends really soon!

Last days in Boulder...

2009-04-28T17:40:00.000-07:00

The Tasmans are gearing up to leave Boulder permanently to start our new life in Illinois! We are very sad to leave and will miss our dear Coloradan friends terribly.

We have a couple more Colorado gigs before we leave for good, however. You can catch us on Friday night at 7.30pm at Cannon Mine Coffee, 210 S. Public Road, Lafayette, tel. 303 665 0625. We'll be playing an informal program including works by Leos Janacek, Thomas Ades and Franz Schubert. We hope to see you there!

The TSQ's Auburn residency in (more) pictures!

2009-03-05T13:10:00.000-08:00

Our whole time here has been faithfully documented by our friends at the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts and Humanities at Pebble Hill, Auburn. If you'd like to see more photos of us on the road, please click here to read the Tumblr blog created for us by our good friend Maiben Beard, who works at the Center.

Schools galore!

2009-03-04T10:57:00.000-08:00

During our time in Alabama, we have been busy playing in schools all over the state, from Scottsboro to Mobile. The kids have been unusually bright and receptive, and we have been thrilled with the musical knowledge they have thanks to the string programs in many of their schools. We are very encouraged to see music taken seriously like this!! What a future young Alabaman string players have if their talent can be nurtured at school!

The Tasman String Quartet in the media recently

2009-02-17T20:23:00.000-08:00

Article about the Tasman String Quartet in Tiger Tales, an Auburn University publication!

More new TSQ pictures

2009-02-17T17:35:00.001-08:00

The "new" TSQ in pictures!

2009-02-17T17:29:00.000-08:00

New photos of the TSQ with our new second violinist Jennifer Banks (pictured second from right) will shortly be up at our website. We're delighted to report that everything's going extremely well with Jenny. We've given our first concerts with the "new" quartet, which have been a great success and attracted very positive audience comment. Here's to the new improved TSQ!

With banjos on our knees...

2009-02-17T17:23:00.001-08:00

Well...not exactly banjos, more like two violins, a viola and a cello... So, as you probably guessed, we're in Alabama! We're currently spending a month in Auburn, Alabama, as guest faculty quartet in residence at Auburn University. We're having an absolutely wonderful time! It's the first time we've been to Alabama, and we really love what we've seen so far. Last night we played a concert at the university, and it wasn't just a full house--there were people sitting on the floor in the aisles! It felt like the entire town turned out! This morning, we visited a music history lecture and talked about Schubert with the undergraduates. It seems like the students here are super bright and engaged. We're off to Birmingham tomorrow to do more schools concerts.

The Tasmans play duos and trios at Grace Lutheran, Friday January 9!

2009-01-04T18:33:00.001-08:00

We hope all our Boulder friends will be able to come and join us this coming Friday, January 9 at 7.30pm at our beloved Grace Lutheran Church, Boulder! The church is located at the corner of 13th and Euclid on University Hill, Boulder, CO 80302. You can call ahead to reserve tickets if you wish (303.442.1883), but they'll be available at the door too. Suggested donations are $15 for adults, $10 for seniors, $5 for students, and children under 12 are offered free admission.

Anna, Chris and Miranda will be presenting a virtuoso programme of duo and trio repertoire, including the Dohnanyi Serenade for string trio, the Handel-Halvorsen Passacaglia for violin and viola, the Kodaly Duo for violin and cello, and Dmitry Sitkovetsky's arrangement of Bach's Goldberg Variations. We're really excited about the repertoire, because we don't normally get to do anything that isn't quartets! We're particularly looking forward to presenting the Bach, which works beautifully in this arrangement. We'll be performing it by candlelight for a special "midwinter" feeling!

The next time the TSQ play in Boulder, it will be with our fantastic new violinist, Jenny Banks! These are exciting times for the quartet!

We do hope to see as many of you as possible on Friday! Keep warm, everyone!

A new second violinist for the Tasman String Quartet!

2008-12-30T09:51:00.001-08:00

Anna van der Zee, Christiaan van der Zee and Miranda Wilson are thrilled to announce that New Zealand violinist Jennifer Banks has accepted an invitation to join the Tasman String Quartet. Our original second violinist James Andrewes left the quartet a month ago to pursue a career in early music, and we wish him well for all his future endeavours. We conducted a search process for his replacement, in which every one of the applicants was a violinist and chamber musician of outstanding quality. It was the hardest decision we have ever had to make, but we feel that Jenny's marvellously energetic playing and brilliant musicianship will inspire the TSQ to new heights in 2009! We will have new photographs up on this blog and on our website as soon as possible.

Happy New Year to all our friends and supporters!

TSQ at Grace Lutheran, Friday November 21, 2008

2008-11-18T12:01:00.000-08:00

This is just a reminder to our Boulder readers that the second concert in our concert series at Grace Lutheran Church will take place this Friday, November 21 at 7.30pm (not Saturday, November 22 as initially advertised). We'll be playing an exciting programme of works by Schubert (the Quartettsatz D.703), Mozart (Quartet in D major K.575), and Beethoven (Quartet in F major Op. 59 No. 1, "Razumovsky"). We will be giving a pre-concert talk at 6.45. We recommend showing up early to get good seats, because some of the seats offer only partial visibility.

Grace Lutheran Church is located at 1001 13th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80302. The church's phone number is (303) 442-1883. Tickets are by door sales only; adults $20, students and seniors $5 and children under 12 free.

We do hope you can make it! Grace Lutheran is a beautiful, acoustically perfect little church, and it's run by wonderful people. We're very excited about this concert series and are very much looking forward to Friday night. See you there!

The TSQ goes to Florida!

2008-11-11T17:51:00.000-08:00

We spent the past week in Tampa, Florida, where we competed in the Rutenberg Chamber Music Competition. We were delighted to be accepted into the finals, and to win the Jeremy Rutenberg Prize for our performance of Haydn's "Emperor" Quartet. We stayed with the Painters, an amazing family who spoiled us rotten, and made some wonderful new friends among our fellow competitors and University of Southern Florida students.

We also found a little time to get away from our instruments! Here's a photo of the four of us at the end of the pier at Clearwater Beach, Florida, which was a pleasant drive across a causeway from Tampa. This was during a spectacular sunset where we spent some time watching flying pelicans diving into the sea for fish!

The next photo is at a miniature golf course where we went to relax after the competition was over! Chris won the game...

Our concert at Sacred Heart Cathedral, Wellington

2008-10-24T16:41:00.000-07:00

We normally use stands! This was taken after the concert, and we took the stands away so we could get a better picture. We hadn't played at Sacred Heart Cathedral before, and it was a really great experience.

On holiday

2008-10-23T03:45:00.000-07:00

Following a successful and enjoyable tour to the New Zealand towns of Gore, Roxburgh, Wanaka, Te Awamutu, Rotorua, Taihape and Motueka for Chamber Music New Zealand, and some self-organized concerts in Auckland and Wellington, the Tasman String Quartet members are spending a few days apart in New Zealand (this almost never happens--we were even playing our instruments together on Christmas Day!). We thought it would be fun to share a few of the photos we took while we were on the road. This one features Anna, Miranda and James warming up in the smallest warm-up room in the world! Or at least the smallest one we've ever seen. It was the vestry of St. James' Anglican Church in Roxburgh, a beautiful nineteenth-century church where we played for a wonderful audience, who gave us our first ever standing ovation in New Zealand! (We got another one in Wellington--lucky us!)

This next picture was taken in Taupo, where we spent a couple of days rehearsing in between our Rotorua and Taihape concerts. (You can't see the spectacular views outside the window, but there were some!) We really relished the opportunity to see quite a lot of our country from out the windows of a series of rental cars and a borrowed van. One forgets how incredibly spectacular it is almost everywhere in New Zealand. This was definitely a tour to remember!

Welcome!

2008-10-16T14:36:00.001-07:00

Hello and welcome to the Tasman String Quartet's new blog! All four of us will be writing regularly here, and we hope our friends will visit this page to keep up with our travels!

For more information about the Tasman String Quartet, please visit our new website: http://www.tasmanstringquartet.com. To hear some of our online recordings, please visit our MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/tasmanstringquartet.

Check in again soon to read about our recent tour of small New Zealand centres for Chamber Music New Zealand, and to see the photographs we took!

Anna van der Zee
James Andrewes
Christiaan van der Zee
Miranda Wilson