Talent and drive add up to fourbythree

How do musicians get to Symphony Space? Any of the members of fourbythree, Columbia’s student-run string chamber ensemble, could easily answer that question: practice, practice, practice.

The group will be playing its first concert of the year at Symphony Space on Saturday, Feb. 20. The concert will be a joint performance with Harvard’s Brattle Street Chamber Players. Columbia’s fourbythree will perform Dmitri Shostakovich’s “Prelude” and “Scherzo for Octet,” Edward Elgar’s “Introduction” and “Allegro,” and Osvaldo Golijov’s “Last Round.” The Harvard ensemble will play Tchaikovsky’s “Souvenir de Florence” and perform the New York premiere of Harvard ’10 student Forrest O’Connor’s composition “Homage to the Old Mill.”

This is the first time the two ensembles have performed together. Founded in September 2008, fourbythree was originally created with the goal of being “democratically run in terms of choosing repertoire and running rehearsal,” says founding member Ken Hamao, CC ‘11.  

Though chamber orchestras have no conductors, fourbythree takes self-leadership a step further by being entirely student-run. This allows for a greater sense of freedom for the musicians in the ensemble. “When you have a teacher or conductor, it can often be less fun,” violinist IhnSeon Park, CC ’13 said. “We can all be open and honest with each other, everyone’s all around the same age, and everyone’s part of the music-making process.”

The ensemble is made up solely of string players, many of whom are students in the joint program between Columbia and Juilliard. According to Hamao, virtually all of the group’s members hope to one day enter into a music profession. The members’ high level of commitment to music makes the group extremely serious about its rehearsals. “We rehearse a lot,” Park said, “but we don’t rehearse too much. We’re all good under pressure, so we rehearse efficiently.”

Being completely student-run means that the group must come up with its own list of pieces to perform. According to Hamao, this is not usually very difficult. In the spirit of democracy, members of the group voted from a list of eight possible pieces to play for the upcoming concert, and a consensus was reached fairly easily. “There are lots of pieces that are really popular, that everyone wants to play,” Park said.

Then again, added Hamao, “it’s hard to distinguish yourself [as a group] if you don’t play unusual, inventive music.” To add to the diversity of the concert, Saturday’s performance will feature three different configurations of string ensembles: the string octet, two string quartets and double bass, and orchestra with string quartet. “Not everyone plays in every piece, so there’s more flexibility,” Park noted. Hamao added that in designing this concert, the goal was to highlight the “dimensions of the quartet,” by playing pieces written for octets (the Golijov piece and the Shostakovich piece) and one for quartet and orchestra (the Elgar).

The Golijov work is certainly the most unusual on the program. Osvaldo Golijov is a Grammy award-winning contemporary composer who has written for solo instruments, orchestra, and chamber ensembles. Both Park and Hamao said that the Golijov piece is their favorite on the program. “This is the first time I’ve heard Golijov’s work, and I think he’s one of the few modern composers who makes things work,” Park commented. “I’m a composer myself, and I’ve studied the art of composition a lot. Quite often, I hear modern music and think, ‘Ok, that’s interesting,’ but with Golijov, I really found him very fascinating.”

“With modern music, there’s lots of abstract thinking,” Hamao added. Hamao came across the Golijov piece in the library at the Aspen Music Festival and School, where he performed this past summer, and brought it back to Columbia for fourbythree this year. “It’s one thing for things to work on paper, but another to work with the audience. Golijov’s music really works with the audience.”