Euclid Quartet
The Euclid Quartet is a world-class string quartet celebrating their 25th anniversary with a fantastic album of short pieces, entitled Breve, and we are featuring several pieces from that album as part of this episode. The link that will take you to all the places to listen to and buy this album is here: https://breve.hearnow.com/ and Euclid Quartet website
In this conversation you’ll get to know each member of the quartet, which is in residence at Indiana University South Bend: Jameson Cooper, violinist and founding member originally from England; you’ll hear about his experiences as a student of Dorothy Delay, and Roland and Almita Vamos. He also talked about the formative years of the quartet and the nuts and bolts of learning repertoire. The other violinist in the quartet is Aviva Hakanoglu, who holds degrees from Harvard, Indiana University and Stony Brook university and was a student of Philip Setzer, and it was really interesting to hear about her experience auditioning for the quartet and her perspectives on community outreach and as an educator. Violist Luis Enrique Vargas is a long-time member of the Euclid quartet, and started his life in music in Venezuela at the age of 14, and spoke about introducing Latin American composers to his colleagues. Finally cellist Justin Goldsmith is the newest member of the quartet. When he was completing his Master’s degree at Indiana University he formed the Vera quartet which held residencies at both IU and the Curtis Institute of Music, where he was also a Community Artist Fellow. I was curious to learn more about the many roles the quartet plays in their capacities as performers, educators and collaborators, and to hear them speak about the special joys and challenges of being members of a full-time quartet.
