Fall Semester 2012 Activities

We are finishing up a busy first semester of our doctorates at UNL! Here are just a few of our experiences over the last couple of months.

We played at the dedication of the new Lied Commons at the Lied Center for the Performing Arts.

We performed for the Sing Around Nebraska Festival with a talented youth choir. Here is a picture of the audience in the Lied Center:

We performed at another Chancellor's pre-game tailgate, this time we played the Orange Blossom Special!

One of our best memories of the semester is our participation in the Xi'an Jiaotong University Week. We met lovely new friends from Xi'an, China performing in a Chinese Folk Ensemble.

The students gave us these lovely gifts from their University:

Here is a sneak peak of our next project:

We Are Officially Cornhuskers!

We just started our studies at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and we are having a fantastic time already! We had the great honor this week of playing Mendelssohn's Octet with the Chiara String Quartet for the Hixon-Lied Concert Series in Kimball Recital Hall on the UNL campus. Here is a picture of Skyros+Chiara after the concert:

We are thankful for the wonderful opportunities in our musical lives right now!

The week before the concert, we visited The Mill Coffee and Tea in the Haymarket district of Lincoln to promote the concert on the Friday Live broadcast of NET 91.1 Nebraska's PBS and NPR Stations. Here we are with Rebecca Fischer from Chiara Quartet at The Mill:

We also checked out what The Mill had to offer!

Other highlights from September included playing for the Chancellor's State of the University address, and the Chancellor's pre-game tailgate! Pictures below.

 

We also enjoyed our first Husker's football game!

Skyros Kitties

As many of you know, Sarah and Justin are the proud parents of two cats, Phineas and Theodora. They are five years old, brother and sister adopted in September 2007 from Austin Veterinary Hospital.

Phineas.                             Theodora.

After a summer without pets, Willie realized he really wanted a kitty too. So Sarah and Willie took a trip to the Lincoln Cat House, a no-kill adoption center that has hundreds of fantastic kitties looking for homes. In the end, it came down to this little guy, named Peanut.

Rory, (formerly known as Peanut) is settling in to his new home at Willie's apartment this week. Rory is named after this guy:

This is Rory Williams, a character from one of the Skyros's favorite TV shows, Doctor Who. 

Rory is an awesome kitty. He's only a year old so he's got a lot of young kitten energy. 

Moving to Lincoln

After two years in Austin, (six for Sarah), we've packed out bags and headed north. 800 miles, almost due north. That's right, folks, we have officially moved to Nebraska.

Many thanks to Sarah's parents, John and Pam, who flew from Seattle to Austin and drove a giant moving van filled with all our earthly possessions. We could not have made this move without their help.

Sarah has been taking pictures of the trip, our new homes in Lincoln and exploring the new city. Here's some of the images she took:

The caravan: Moving van, Willie's car, Justin's Car

 Willie on the front steps of his apartment building. The large window on the left is his bedroom. It was unbelievably cool for May 31st, only in the mid-60s, perfect weather for moving boxes.

The former lightning rod factory where Sarah and Justin now have a loft.

Kitties always are good help when moving. Boxes are the best.

O Street, the main boulevard in downtown Lincoln

 Yia Yia's Pizzeria on O Street

Looking forward to settling in to our new homes, a new city, a new school and many new adventures to come.

Introducing James Moat

Beginning May 16, 2012, Canadian violinist James Moat will join the Skyros Quartet. We are thrilled to have his talent join our ensemble as we head off to Lincoln, Nebraska. James and Justin met at Wilfrid Laurier University (Waterloo, Ontario), where they studied violin together under Jerzy Kaplanek. After auditioning several candidates last fall, we invited James to become our new second violinist.

Recently employed as a section violinist with the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra, James Moat has also played regularly with the Kitchener/Waterloo, Sudbury, Ottawa, Kingston, Gatineau and National Academy orchestras. An avid traveler, James ventured overseas to pursue a Masters degree at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance in Limerick, Ireland. The year provided James with several exciting opportunities, including performances abroad in Paris and Amsterdam, and a research trip to visit the home of Jean Sibelius in Finland.

Prior to receiving his Masters degree, James spent a year studying at the Interlochen Arts Academy under Paul Sonner, and he worked with Jerzy Kaplanek of the Penderecki String Quartet to earn his Bachelor of Music from Wilfrid Laurier University. James spent his summers partaking in various music festivals, including Casalmaggiore, Meadowmount, and International School for Musical Arts founded by Atis Bankas of the TSO. He also spent several summers playing with Boris Brott's National Academy Orchestra in Hamilton, Ontario. James is a native of Calgary, Alberta.

Explore UT

This Saturday was UT's annual open house, Explore UT. Kids of all ages come from all over Central Texas to for demonstrations, presentations, and activities from every department on campus. We were glad to represent the Butler School of Music at the Texas Memorial Museum in a "Music Expedition" through the museum. We gave a small presentation about every 25 minutes, playing Haydn and Vrebablov. It was a really fun event, with kids, families, and some of our students from String Project circulating through the audience. It was the first time any of us have performed in a room full of fossils and dinosaurs!

This photo was taken by Evan Leslie, the outreach coordinator at the BSoM. Many thanks to Evan for all that he does for everyone he does for our school!

Here are some more pictures that Evan took of the other performances at the museum on Saturday. 

Final Master's Recital

We'll be playing our final Master's recital this Friday evening. We've been working really hard preparing for this performance and we're looking forward to sharing our work. For those reading this in Austin, we'd be delighted to see you on Friday February 24th at 7:30pm in Jessen Auditorium (located in Homer Rainey Hall, the building directly east of the Harry Ransom Center). There is a parking garage a block south, as well as free parking on Guadalupe and the streets of West Campus after 6:00pm. We hope to see you there!

Spring 2012 - What we're up to

As the third week of the Spring semester begins, we'd like to share what we're up to as we finish up our degree at UT. Our main priority these days is preparing for our final Masters' recital and auditions for graduate quartet residencies! We're playing works by Haydn and Dvorak, as well as a few other shorter works, on February 24th in Jessen Auditorium. We hope you all can make it!

Academically, we're fully immersed in our quartet studies this semester; every class we're taking is directly related to string quartets! Here's what we're taking at the UT Butler School of Music:

• Weekly quartet coachings with Will Fedkenheuer of the Miro Quartet
• A seminar with John Largess of the Miro Quartet on the subject of preparing outreach performances
• An independent study with Prof. Sandy Yamamoto on the subject of preparing grants, press kits, and other business related functions
• Individual lessons with our respective teachers
• UT New Music Ensemble

In addition to our studies at school, we're still teaching at the UT String Project, where we maintain private studios and teach various classes (orchestra, group, and beginning music theory). We're also working in two area high schools with CHAMPS (Chamber Music in Public Schools), a local non-profit that provides free weekly coachings in public schools. Our student quartets from Anderson and Akins High Schools performed a few weeks ago at the CHAMPS Winter Recital. Just this last Saturday, the students from Akins performed their Mozart once more in a masterclass with Maestro Peter Bay, conductor of the Austin Symphony. We're very proud of all that our various students have accomplished!