For violist Sam Quintal, playing at Juneau Jazz & Classics means he gets to come home to Alaska. “If I weren’t part of the (Jasper String) quartet, I’d be in Fairbanks,” he said. Quintal’s brother, still in Fairbanks, is astounded when he sees photos of Quintal all duded up in city-slicker concert clothes. “It took the quartet quite a while to East Coasternize me,” Quintal explained. “It’s just broadening my experiences.”
When he was just four, Quintal heard a fiddle tune on the radio and wanted to learn to play. When he still harbored the desire at six, his mother started violin lessons. He credits his success to “Fairbanks’ strong Suzuki music program”; Lesley Salisbury, one of the founders of the program, who was a “mentor, a wonderful spirit, and a great lady”; and his family who “never does anything half way,” Quintal said. “I just didn’t know it would take this long to play well.”
At Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio, when Quintal and classmates formed the Jasper String Quartet, the other violinists told the 6-foot, 4-inch Fairbanks fellow, “You’re big. You should play the viola.”
The group studied with the Tokyo String Quartet at Yale University, served as Rice University’s graduate quartet-in-residence (Texas), Ernst C. Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence at the Caramoor Center for Music and Arts (NY), at the Chamber Classics in Naples (Florida), and as Oberlin Conservatory’s quartet-in-residence.
They’ve performed in Japan, Korea, Italy, Norway, London, and across the US, including Alaska last year. “Sometimes we’re six weeks on the road. It gets challenging,” Quintal said. “But we get to go to these incredible places, including Alaska, and we’re having a lot of fun.”
The Jaspers blasted their way through chamber music competitions, earning a slew of first place awards and grand prizes, including Yale School of Music’s Horatio Parker Memorial Prize in 2009. In 2010 they became Astral Artists.
According to the reviews, they’re hitting high notes in the classical music world. Donald Sosin in Lakeville Journal wrote, “This is already an astounding ensemble….The music breathed and swelled in an expressive way....Even the moments of silence vibrated with an energy.” James McQuillen wrote in the Oregonian, “The performance…took the listeners from their casual setting into a world of keenly felt emotion and fathomless despair….the music gripped them.” Not bad for a violist fresh off the Tanana Valley tundra.
The four musicians come from very different places. J Freivogel, violinist, is from St. Louis, Missouri. His wife, Rachel Henderson Freivogel, cellist, hails from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Sae Chonabayashi, violinist, is from Tokyo, and then there’s Quintal from Alaska. It’s amazing that these four have joined forces, but even more amazing that their music sounds as if it comes from one instrument. “They are polished, engaged, and in tune with one another,” according to the Classical Voice of North Carolina. They play “with sparkling vitality and great verve.”
They are also noted for their “programming savvy.” They play in a way that tells a story and makes complex music accessible for diverse audiences. During their Bravo Beethoven! performance, they’ll be playing three Beethoven compositions from different periods of his life and will “succinctly” discuss the artist’s incredible evolution. They don’t want the talking to detract from the music.
In another program, they compared Beethoven’s development with Anton Webern’s, drawing parallels from works written at different times in the musicians’ lives. “They both used the same process of exploring new ways of bringing expression to their music,” Quintal said.
Their many outreach performances in the US and Japan are sometimes at unique locations. At the Banff Centre in Canada, they performed “guerrilla chamber music” at shopping malls and schools around Alberta. In Juneau, they’ll be performing at the Nugget Mall, certainly a guerrilla shopping stronghold.
Quintal likes Juneau Jazz & Classics’ balance between performance and outreach activities. “We really enjoy teaching,” he said. “At the mall, whatever the audience, whatever the age from 3 to 83, we try to make the music accessible. It may be the first time they’ve heard it or the fiftieth, but we want to make these programs exciting.”
Teaching forces the musicians to think about music in different ways. “You might have to play peek-a-boo with a three-year-old while you’re playing. It’s in the music. It just needs to be pointed out,” Quintal said.
The group anticipates an intense week while they serve as artists-in-residence in Juneau May 11-19. They play Bravo Beethoven! at the Church of the Holy Trinity on Thursday, May 12, and a free Brown Bag Concert at Nugget Mall on Friday, May 13. On Saturday they play “Strings at the Shrine,” music by Mozart and Brahms in memory of Myra Howe at the Shrine of St. Therese with Paul Rosenthal. “We’re so excited to play with Paul,” Quintal said. “He’s always been one of my idols, both as a musician and as an Alaskan.”
On Sunday, May 15, the Jasper String Quartet joins jazz artist Claire Daly for an evening of classical and jazz music with complimentary hors d’oeuvres and no-host bar at the University of Alaska Southeast library. After one day of rest, the group will teach workshops and master classes in the evening at the university’s Egan Classroom Wing. “You learn a lot teaching,” Quintal said. “Teaching helps you grow.”
Last year was Quintal’s first visit to Juneau. “It was gorgeous,” he said. “I love glaciers.” He went flightseeing, and the last day he was here, he hiked by the Mendenhall Glacier at 6 a.m. before flying to Fairbanks to perform there. “I got to bring the quartet home,” he said, “to show friends in Fairbanks what I’m doing down on the East Coast.”
The group is excited to come back to Juneau, to renew friendships, to perform, to teach, and to hike. “We all love the outdoors,” he said. “We love Juneau.”
