[ music ] [ music continues ] [ music continues ] [ music ] This looks tasty!

I've got my own salad.

It's Christmas.

It is.

Oh, you have shrimp.

Oh, yeah.

Would you like one?

Oh.

I'm good, thank you.

Is there sharing in chamber music?

Yes.

Well.

My name is Derrick Skye.

I'm a composer and a musician.

And I play a lot of electronic instruments and write a lot of music.

I'm Barbara Podgurski, born in Queens, New York, and I'm a pianist, and I play in a number of chamber groups and ensembles.

My name is Abi Fayette.

My main job is playing in a string quartet and whatever other chamber music opportunities, you know, bonus if they're with friends, come up.

My name is June Han.

I play the harp and my main job is actually teaching.

So I teach at Yale School of Music and Peabody Institute.

Juilliard Pre-College and Columbia.

But I love playing chamber music and, actually know Jeff.

We played in many groups together.

Yes, indeed.

My name is Jeffrey Zeigler.

I'm a cellist.

In a past life I played in a couple of string quartets.

And since then I've been involved in a lot of, solo and collaborative projects.

You know, when I think about chamber music, I think about small ensembles without a conductor.

In my mind, it kind of points to a certain style and genre of collaborative music making.

So it's almost like a subset of collaboration.

And when you play chamber music, we have to communicate with each other.

You have to give someone something to work with, and then they give it back.

It's like a ping pong or like tossing the ball back and forth.

But you're also like one person.

You're playing, you're creating something together.

You almost have to read each other's mind.

And it also feels sometimes that because, unlike orchestra, it's fewer instruments, so the audience can actually zoom in to the instruments and have a better view.

Because sometimes like we look at food, we eat food with the eyes first.

We listen also with the eyes and then especially because I'm a harpist, I know that when they see harp, they will listen to the harp.

Is that why you think that the harp should be in the front of the orchestra?

Always!

Yes!

I think it's very fitting that we're here eating a meal together, because so many people have likened chamber music to sort of a spirited dinner party conversation, sort of happening with no words.

And, I think one of the things that you get from experiencing chamber music, as opposed to, you know, say, a solo recital or an orchestral experience is you get this sort of intimacy of watching people converse and that intimacy of sort of seeing everybody together at sort of a table of that collectiveness, yet everybody's still an individual.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's also really cool because I love watching the facial expressions and the body language of people when they're playing music.

And in an orchestra, if you're sitting really far away you miss a lot of the details like...But in chamber music when you can get up front, you can see like the joy in the eyes, you know, or the sorrow.

Or the fear.

And the sweat coming down the side.

As a young child, I went to Manhattan School of Music pre-college, and when I was old enough, maybe I was like nine.

They asked, like, do you want to play chamber music?

Do you want to take chamber music?

And I didn't know what it was.

And they're like, oh, well, you get to play music with your friends, or you'll make friends.

You can play piano duets where you both sit on the same bench.

Or, you know, that sounded fun.

And I remember everyone learning how to exist without someone telling you when to play.

And so from a very early age, we were taught how to communicate in a natural way, like we were taught that chamber music was a conversation and that we were learning to communicate and be natural the way we are, just speaking to each other as well.

I loved it so much as a kid that I eventually, like, that became what I did in life.

That's how much I loved it and I have such fond memories of it.

I, as I think back, a lot of my friends, they were all, oh yeah you know, chamber music is the best, playing chamber music.

I was like, oh yeah, string quartets, that's like what you do at wedding gigs, right?

Like, I sort of.

I didn't totally understand what that world was like.

And this violist friend of mine, he was also a pianist.

He was like, let's get a group together.

We'll come over to my house and we'll learn the Brahms G minor piano quartet.

For months, like maybe a few times a week after school I'd hop on the BART train and go over to his house.

And it was the most fun I had as a musician in my early years.

I loved playing an orchestra, but this was different.

It was like getting together with friends and making music, and I decided that at that moment that if there is a way to make a career of rehearsing Brahms chamber music in a living room, I was going to do that.

Nice.

Unfortunately, that's not very realistic.

You'd get tired of it.

I remember, I think I was about eight years old when I played my first string quartet, it was Mendelssohn, opus 12.

It was very enriching to, for me as a young, young person to discover, wow, there are other people out there like me who really love music and want to do it with other people.

And this is not anything like a school project.

That's so funny.

You know, in America, I think at a very young age, you do a lot of chamber music and also a lot of orchestra.

In Korea, where I'm native of, Korea, we don't have that.

But also my father was a diplomat before he retired, so we moved to a lot of countries.

It was very hard to maintain playing harp because there were no teachers of harp back then.

So I kept continuing back to piano and whenever I was able to have harp lessons, but primarily piano.

So harp came much later.

So when I had my first chamber music with harp and another instrument that's not a harp, I was not very good as a player.

I was young and not very good, and the other person was a clarinetist.

And that music that I played had a lot of notes for the harp, which I couldn't play fast enough, and I could see her face going red.

If I see her now, I would like to apologize.

I'm sorry.

She had to breathe, I think, 500 times more than she would like if we played now.

So my first encounter with chamber music was not, like so much fun.

I was so nervous and feeling bad.

That memory is so strong.

I, I don't remember her name, but I remember her face very well.

She was very tall.

And red.

But I think it teaches you compassion and patience.

Everything you learn in your music lesson applies to life.

Like, you have to be compassionate.

You have to be an excellent listener as a person.

You have to have a strong work ethic.

You have to be able to cooperate with others and to also take instruction as well as give it.

So I think all of those factors come into play when we play with each other and they apply to life.

So there is no wasted time in taking music lessons as a child.

It's valuable for everyone because it teaches you life skills.

In my opinion.

We've probably all had this experience where like, I feel very strongly about this and you're like, no, we shouldn't take any time and we battle it out.

And then at some point you have to choose a way for the performance.

And how many times have you gone after the performance and realized, oh my gosh, my idea was terrible.

Your idea was much better.

Never!

Never?

[ laughter ] She's been my-way-or-the-highway route all the way.

[ music ] For you is a halibut wrapped in grape leaves, with a thyme-parsley citronette.

Paired it with a crisp Sauvignon blanc from California to accentuate the herbalness.

Thank you.

Enjoy!

Looks delicious!

Wow.

Fabulous.

Cheers, everyone!

Cheers!

Yes.

Oh, yes.

Can I get an eye contact?

Eye contact!

That's also a chamber music thing.

It is.

Look at how in unison we were.

We were.

Yeah.

Oh, this is delicious.

I think there, there are a lot of similarities between cooking and making music.

Oh, absolutely.

With the meal, you're telling a story through food.

Yeah, like you're going on a journey through food, and the wine is paired with the meal.

And sometimes there'll be multiple different types of wine paired with different dishes.

And I like to imagine, like each element of the music being ingredients in the food.

So when something is very dissonant, that could be the spice or the sour or the bitter and we like that.

And I also feel like the history of food and the history of music are very much related.

Right?

Like a lot of dishes that we have today are combinations of things that people have tried.

People have met other people and said, hey, this tastes really good.

What happens if I mix this with that?

And this is how like all the genres come together.

You know, which is super fascinating.

You know, I mean, when you're talking about the origins of this particular very specialized art form, I mean, I mean, it was literally a type of art form that was meant to be enjoyed by Non-professionals.

In homes, a way for people to enjoy leisure time.

They used to play together.

They used to get together.

That was what they did Saturday night.

Everyone played something back then.

Yeah.

Yes.

And I think that was all of our loves actually.

Chamber music reading parties.

Yes.

[ chopping sounds ] [ music ] [ sizzling sounds ] [ music intensifies ] [ music continues ] Thank you.

You're welcome.

What do you have before you is a daube de boeuf.

It's a, basically a French pot roast.

But what's better than the American version is that the harmony and the contrast of the ingredients, you have the rich chuck beef contrasting with the orange peel.

Copious amounts of brandy, as well as the sweet root vegetables in there.

And the salmon here is pistachio dusted with a touch of cedar plank smoke.

So please enjoy.

Thank you.

Yes!

[ laughter ] [ music ] Chamber music for me, it's one of the original forms of communication and of community building.

Of, you know, going into your neighbor's house in the 1700s and 1800s and playing music together in an evening and you see paintings and pictures of, you know, depictions of people doing this.

It was created as a community building experience by nature, out of necessity, back hundreds of years ago.

And it's still that way now.

It's a community building experience, period.

In my... And then in chamber music, I feel like when you think in real life, you propose to play chamber music with people that you like.

If you don't like them, you don't even say, let's read something together.

You know, like an orchestra is, it's okay to do like, you know, you play orchestra, but chamber music is that kind of intimacy where it's so personal that if you don't like the person maybe the, you know, the good music is not naturally coming out.

But it has to be that even the working process, the rehearsal process has to be something to look forward to.

So the orchestra is so big that you can hide someone in there that you don't get along with.

But then chamber music is so small, with like one-on-a part that you actually do kind of need to have some kind of agreement with them.

You can't be sworn enemies.

Yes.

Because that's not going to work.

Now, wait a minute then, is chamber music actually in trouble?

I mean, it seems like there was chamber music before there was orchestras.

It seems like that's probably the natural thing to do.

I would agree with that.

Orchestras are probably the outlier.

Yeah.

If you think about just the overall scope of music in the world and in history.

Small groups playing together, different instruments, one-on-a part.

And solo, that I would imagine are very common.

That's the norm, right?

Yeah.

But it's interesting to see how playing in a string quartet, we are a small business.

You know, the four of us are equal partners, sort of operating and trying to, you know, thrive and perpetuate this business model.

But we don't have a large company backing us.

We don't have a large industrial complex of many people in our employ that help, you know, navigate the world with us.

Yeah.

And I think that going back to something that you'd mentioned, the universality of music is very, like the experience is always universal.

Of how to experience music and then being able to learn music is also universal.

Right?

And being able to participate in music activities is also universal.

And I think that a lot of people want to be involved.

And in a chamber music setting that makes it way easier to communicate with people how they can be involved than in a large concert hall.

And we were talking earlier before we came to sit down about how people have told us stories about how uncomfortable they feel in a large concert setting, because what if they clap at the time?

Or what if they gasp because something was just so beautiful they started crying?

Or if they scream because there's a loud boom like in the middle of the symphony or something.

But in a chamber music setting, I've seen people like, you guys can clap in between the movement it's fine.

You kind of talk to the audience sometimes.

Yeah, you break that wall and hey, yeah, we're going to try this thing,let's see if it works And then everyone's on the edge of their seat, and then no matter what you do, everyone loves it.

Right?.

So I think that's incredible.

I think for me, the biggest argument to keep and preserve chamber music is in a world where we are growing farther and farther apart from each other, something that can be a focal point for people to feel connected.

And I think chamber music is such a great example of doing that, because it's not, over complicated.

You know, you have up to what, 8 or 9 people, one-on-a part without a conductor, without somebody making the decisions for the ensemble.

The decisions come collectively.

And, you know, when people come into that environment, they can feel as though they are valued as an individual.

They're not just one of a, you know, of a school of fish.

Yeah.

And people are encouraged when they see other people doing it.

Right.

Right.

So then it becomes like this community event, like you were saying, like hey, this is really fun.

Like, right.

Yeah.

[ music ] [ music intensifies ] [ music continues ] Bistro lemon pound cake with crème fraiche.

I was asked, why do we end on dessert?

Why is that always the last course?

And, I suppose it's when you hear a beautiful piece.

When it concludes, I find myself saying, That was sweet.

And so I guess this is how it's going to end.

Looks delicious.

Beautiful!

Bon appetit.

Thank you.

Nothing is too sweet for me.

So, June, is there like a a piece of music or, a sound or, instrumentation or a style that kind of evokes dessert for you?

You know, I have a very big sweet tooth, but in dessert, there's so many different kinds of dessert.

There's a sorbet and there's a lava cake, and there's a lemon pound cake, you know.

But because I'm a harpist, I tend to go to my own instrument because that's the one I'm most familiar but I would have also mentioned a sonata like Haydn's sonatas.

Sometimes it gives me so much joy.

It's never too heavy, never too light, just very unctuous, you know?

Right.

And I don't think it's a steak.

I don't think it's a salad.

I don't think it's a cheese plate.

I think of it as a dessert for me.

Yeah.

What about you?

I always think about in the context of music, dessert is is a little sort of, bonus.

A little like, in my string quartet, we call them candies.

Bonbons.

You know, it's funny because in the, in the standard way in which concerts are always set up, the largest piece on the program usually finishes it.

And then, you know, where do you go from there?

It's like ending a meal on, like, you know, steak and potatoes.

I mean, that's a lot.

Yeah.

And so for me, I think sort of, you know, this idea of like a little sort of digestive, a bonbon, you know, something that's short, compact, that can sort of you can just let it waft over you as you're sort of digesting before you make whatever walk or drive home from the meal, you're going to embark on.

Something to sort of relax.

A lot of times I feel like the last piece on a program is like the most bombastic and big.

And then we'll come back out hoping there's an encore.

We always prepare something because when you're in such a small setting and a lot of the people like, get to know you, they come from the neighborhood and they're repeat customers.

And so we prepare 1 or 2 encores and I kind of find like they're like a little dessert, like a bonbon.

Nothing too heavy and big and crazy, but something nice and light, like light and lively like a minute or two.

Yeah.

That somehow relates to the the pieces that you're playing.

[ music ] What I'm looking forward to is for musicians of every genre to embrace the variety of tuning systems from all over the world.

That's so specific.

That, is so... [ laughter ] I didn't expect you to say that.

I think that's probably the most unexpected thing.

Because I knew it was going to be unexpected.

Let me explain myself.

Let me explain myself.

So I wrote this string quartet.

It's inspired by like Persian music and Assyrian music.

Like there's a whole population of people that use just more than 12 pitches.

And I can't help but feel like, well, what could be created musically if people were able to learn that language just as much as they learn jazz, or just as much as... But it's a heavy lift because engineering wise, you can't get those pitches on the piano unless there's a bunch of engineering that has to happen, right?

And so, and the piano is really like the focal point of, I would argue, all of Western classical music kind of hovers and orbits around the way that the piano functions.

I would hope that that's... Maybe a new kind of piano?

Or a new kind of piano, but then also just like a just a total embrace of.

I find that like the last frontier of notes.

So you're talking about sort of an expansion of the language that we have available to us?

A total expansion.

Like an open-mindedness... >> Absolutely ... of chamber musicians.

All of it.

Like one big happy family.

A blended family.

I imagine the holy grail of musician or composer is somebody that can play with anyone at any time, in any style, forever.

I think I just lost my job.

[ music ] So what would you suggest are the best entry points, the best ways for people to want to be involved in either playing chamber music or listening to chamber music?

You know, this might be a very blasphemous thing to say, but given that we're living in a technological age, you know.

A lot of, you know, there's a lot of barriers to entry to classical music because it's a type of experience that's not necessarily relatable in everyday life.

But, you know, as a very beginner step go on YouTube, type in string quartet and just see, you know, you can access a huge variety of styles and interpretations and composers and you know, use your technology to your advantage.

And that's a safe place too.

Yeah.

You can do it on your own, on your own time, in your pajamas, in your living room, wherever you want.

And you stop if you don't like it.

You know, and then you can find something else you like.

But give it a chance.

Don't just stop at the first thing that you see and you're like, oh, this is too much for me.

You know, use it as a way to explore and click around and don't just stick to, you know, maybe a standard string quartet, but you see like put in different instrument combinations and see what comes up.

I mean, the internet should be your friend.

It should be.

So... And then go to something live.

Exactly!

[ music ] Well, this has been quite a treat to converse with you all this evening.

Absolutely.

So what should we cheers to?

Chamber music.

The chef.

And the chef.

Cheers to the chef!

Thank you.

Yes.

[ glasses clinking ] Yes.

Panoramic eyes.

>> Yes.

That's right.

This was a decadent evening.

Yeah.

We're spoiled now.

We are.

Can we do this again?

So this is going to turn into a multi-season series, right?

[ music concludes ] [ music ] [ music continues ]