To contact the Artisan Quartet or be placed on its mailing list for notifications of upcoming events, please subscribe to our newsletter on the home page. You may unsubscribe at any time. Or you may send an email to info@artisanquartet.com.



Your Wedding or Party.
Prices:
$1500.00 for the first hour.
$500.00 for each subsequent half hour.
Contact Bruce Williams for information on hiring The Artisan Quartet for your special event.

Bruceviola@hotmail.com
512-497-5496



To receive our email Newsletter, sign up on our home page.
May 14, 2012
Hello Artisan Quartet fans,

For those of you with a short attention span, see immediately below for the basic Artisan Quartet concert information you need for the next two months - all others feel free to read on. Visit our web site for details and to purchase tickets at http://artisanquartet.com.

May 25 and 26: Genius at Play and St. Mat's and Blackerby's; all Beethoven.

June 6: Noon concert at the Victoria Bach Festival in Victoria; Philip Glass.

June 7: 8:00 concert at the Victoria Bach Festival in Victoria; Arthur Foote with flutist Adah Jones.

July 17: 8:00 concert at Blackerby's; Haydn and Mozart with pianist Rick Rowley.

July 20: 8:00 concert in San Antonio on the Mozart Festival 2012 at University of the Incarnate Word.

It's been almost two months now since our successful New York debut, and we want to thank all of you for your support and enthusiasm for all our endeavors. We have seen and spoken with many of you since our return, but for those that have not heard yet, our performance at Carnegie Hall was a virtual sell out for a very enthusiastic audience. We received a standing ovation and an invitation from MidAmerica Productions to perform on their series again next season if we are interested. Molly, one of our contacts at MidAmerica, always attends the performances. She told us that their regulars are not at all shy about letting her know right away if they liked the concert, and they liked it. We did not get a review from a New York newspaper, but we did get posts on our Facebook page from a few audience members. One New Yorker wrote, "Thank you for the great concert last night… true music, true musicians." As far as we're concerned, that's a rave New York review! For more on our trip, have a look at our Facebook page. There are some great photos and quips.

We are not resting on this accomplishment, however, as it was just one step on our ongoing journey. We hit the ground running when we got home, and in addition to all our Austin Symphony, teaching, and freelance duties, we have already performed a few quartet concerts since Carnegie, including a fantastic concert at the Georgetown Library with pianist Toby Blumenthal and sponsored by the Round Rock Symphony. We also performed in San Antonio on a fund raiser for the Mozart Festival Texas. We played with pianist Rick Rowley and will team up with Rick again July 20th to perform on the Mozart Festival 2012 at the University of the Incarnate Word. We'll do that performance here in Austin Tuesday, July 17th at Blackerby's. We'll play some light Summer music including a great Haydn quartet and the two Mozart piano quartets with Rick.

We are also performing twice at the Victoria Bach Festival in June and have started working on the Quartet no. 5 by Philip Glass. This work is a departure from our usual offerings, but we are very excited to add the piece to our repertoire and honored to be invited back to perform at the Bach Festival by director Craig Hella Johnson.

Of course the next big thing for us occurs May 25th and 26th at St. Matthew's and Blackerby's respectively -- just a few weeks away. We'll present the fifth installment of our series "Genius at Play," the complete quartets of Beethoven. This concert is entitled "Music for a Later Era" and refers to the opus 59 #1 quartet that we will perform. After publication of this work it was roundly criticized in many circles for being too hard to play and to understand. This did not phase the master, only prompting him to say to those who scoffed that they were idiots and his was "Music for a Later Era". The delightful opus 18 #3 is also on this concert as well as opus 132. The famous "Heiliger Dankgesang" or "Holy Song of Thanksgiving" is part of 132 and is perhaps the most touching and inspirational music in the repertoire.

We hope to see all of you at these concerts as we finish our most successful season to date!