Wow! - well it's been a long time since we posted a blog, the reason being that so much has been happening with the quartet. It's difficult to know where to start!

            The biggest news is the personnel changes in the Mavron Quartet. As you may have known, Sarah our original cellist left us in April 2007 to move home to Brighton. She's doing fine- we've all meet up a few times since and all is well with her. This is brilliant to see as it was must have been a big decision but I think the right one for her. We spent a year trialling cellists, as we wanted to give everyone a fair idea of the wide variety of work we do. In April 08 we appointed Lucy O'Connor as the Mavron Quartet cellist. Many thanks to everyone who showed an interest in the quartet.

            As soon as we appointed Lucy, Becky our original viola player also left to move home. As you can imagine, Katy and I felt like we were banging our heads together! Becky, like Sarah, also seems to be enjoying life at home and is pursuing a different career path. We moved very swiftly to find a new viola player and two weeks ago we appointed Benjamin Kaminski. We were more concentrated with a sense of urgency in our decision making and had much shorter trials. Katy and I couldn't face another year of treading water as it were! We shall arrange some new publicity photos and update our websites, in the near future. So you'll be able to read all about our new members and see them…......

            Since Katy's last blog about our Romanian trip, we have performed at the Riverfront, Newport and the American Ambassador's Residence at Winfield House (where Henry Winkler, aka The Fonz, said to us, 'You guys sound great!'). We recorded the last movement of Smetana's String Quartet 1 for a CD accompaniment to a publication of Dr A Watson's The Biology of Musical Performance - due out in the summer 2009. We also worked again with record producer Charlie Francis for the French band Pony Express' debut album Daisy Street, which is available to buy now!

            Outreach work has been plentiful with a workshop for the wonderful organisation Hemi Help as well as a project involving the Gate Arts Centre (where the Mavron Quartet are in residence) and local primary schools which took place over six weeks.

            More recently we saw the Wihan Quartet again; this time for a master class in Bristol. This was organised by the dedicated Simon and Pamela Majaro of the CAVATINA Chamber Music Trust.

            Currently, the Mavron Quartet is enjoying rehearsing for the St David's Hall Primary Prom's The Mozart Effect.  We have to do a little acting and sing a capella in Latin which is exciting and challenging! We do get to wear microphones like the pop stars which I'm personally thrilled about!

            Future projects include the dance project with Charlie Barber and Jean Abreu. In 2007, the Mavron Quartet received an award from the Arts Council of Wales to commission Charlie Barber to compose a new work for dance and string quartet. A tour around Wales is planned for the start of 2009 which includes a performance at Aberystwyth Arts Centre - my home town!  Another dance project with James Williams and Joanne Young is scheduled for September 12^th and 13^th 2008 in Cardiff.

            We are also waiting to hear if our application to the Arts Council of Wales for our outreach work in care homes and schools in Ceredigion is successful. The project would also be supported by the CAVATINA Chamber music trust and will hopefully take place in October 2008.

            Phew! That's a lot of information to read but it's been over six months since our last blog. Now with Lucy and Ben on board we hope to get everything running smoothly again. I'm sure Lucy and Ben will be posting a blog in the near future as will Katy - so watch out! Thanks to everyone for all your support- especially over the last year. Did I mention we are performing in Holland in a couple of weeks?!!!

Bye for now,

Chrissie x

The Mavron Quartet

I've never heard or seen so many harps in one place! The Mavron Quartet is currently quartet in residence for the Arpa Viva Cymru 7th European Harp Symposium, held in the Wales Millennium Centre. Having arrived back from Chichester after a fantastic week of coaching with the Chilingirian Quartet and performances, we'd barely time to unpack our suitcases. It has been hectic and it is not over yet!

Yesterday the quartet had a fourteen hour day, rehearsing and performing in two concerts.  Ravel's Introduction and Allegro was a compulsory element for the four professional finalists. I calculated that we played through the work at least twelve times yesterday, so we are quite familiar with the work now!  In between these rehearsals and the evening performance, the Mavron quartet also had to squeeze in a lunchtime recital with Fabrice Pierre, performing Debussy's Dances on a single half hour rehearsal just before the performance!

Tomorrow we are performing Bach and Buendia with harpists (and adjudicator) Ieuan Jones and Thursday harp concerto miniatures. It has been great to meet with the soloists and their repertoire- just a shame there aren't more hours in the day or more days in a week!

Friday lunchtime will see the Mavron Quartet performing at Aberystwythr Music Fest. It is an action packed month for the quartet!

Bye for now,

Chrissie x

The Mavron String Quartet

Last night saw the Mavron Quartet 'legging it' out of Winfield House, the American Ambassador's residence and last week fleeing from Windsor Castle laden with suit and instrument cases. It must have looked like scenes out of The Sound of Music!

It was entrancing to meet HM the Queen last night, who was guest of honour and see celebrities such as Don Johnson from the Miami Vice days in the flesh. It is tricky sometimes not to be distracted whist playing, by the celebrities walking past and all the extravagant cocktail dresses. However, we soon arrived back down to earth with a thump, as the reality of catching last trains, missing connections and the whole public transport system consumed us. Perhaps one day we will have our own chauffeurs, so we don't have to run past police guards, security checks and sniffer dogs with no time for pleasantries. Or maybe helicopters would be better....

Chrissie x

The Mavron String Quartet

Three of the group were invited to Bournemouth to participate in a training day aimed at equipping young musicians with the skills and knowledge to sucessfully work with and engage young offenders in a variety of diffrent environments.

We all found the day really interesting and inspiring. It was particularly informative to work with members of the of staff from the Youth Offenders team in the Bournemouth area, and musicians who have already undertaken work and projects with young people affected by a variety of different challenging issues. They helped to demonstrate what a challenging yet rewarding area this can be to work in.

Hopefully some shadowing and mentoring sessions will follow with a view to us undertaking some work in this field hopefully in Wales.

Watch this space!

Becky xx

We've had a busy few weeks, on the 10th May we performed for the launch of this years Lower Machen Festival at the fantastic Cefn Tilla, seat of Lord Rhaglen of Monmouthshire. We spent a very hectic few days at the Benslow Music Trust working with lots of Clarinettists as a part of the Cottee Clarinet Course, run by the Trust. The course aimed to make it possible for amateur and young professional clarinettists to get to know the most popular examples of the Clarinet Repertoire  by presenting them with the opportunity of working with a professional quartet for the duration of the course (The other quartet's were the fantastic Bingham Quartet and the Solstice Quartet). It was a great oppotunity for us to get to know some of the standard repertoire for Clarinet Quintet a little better with such enthusiastic players. Another highlight f the weekend was hearing Clarinettist David Campbell and the Bingham Quartet performing the Brahms Quintet.

Early last week saw us performing at Windsor Castle as a part of the Live Music Now! 30th anniversary celebrations. It was a fantastic evening in the most amazing venue imaginable there were a few familiar friendly faces from back home in Cardiff  there which was great. We were lucky enough to be introduced to HRH Prince Charles who was lovely. Also performing was Maxim Vengerov, and two of us, snuck back stage to hear him play and managed to meet the man himself and get his autograph after the performance (which was as you can imagine amazing ) it was great as well to see children appearing in the performance as well the whole occasion seemed to really encapsulate the whole ethos of Live Music Now!

Becky xx

TMSQ

www.mavronquartet.co.uk

More exciting news.

We hope to be announcing dates for several exciting outreach and edcational projects in south and mid Wales in the next week or so. More soon..................................

Becky xx

Well, we came back down to earth with a bump yesterday!

We returned to work with an enjoyable schools workshop in Cardiff with 120 very lively and very responsive children - there are more to come, which should keep us busy and on our toes for a while.

Great Fun!

( We're still searching for dancers and choreographers - we've already had some very exciting responses but are still accepting propsals - see previous posts for further info!)

Becky xx