Mississippi Studios—I'd heard of that.

by CMNW guest blogger Madelyn Villano

Mississippi Studios—I'd heard of that. Having gone to as many shows in PDX as I could as a minor (which is not too many—but enough to familiarize myself with the scene around town), I'd heard you could catch good ones there, quality ones. How much would my experience that first Sunday differ from those other shows I'd been to, I wondered, being that the Jasper String Quartet was performing? Being the first Protégé performance of the festival? The evaluation, as it should have, started before I'd walked through the door.

It seemed a cool area to chill in, Mississippi Avenue. Local, fresh, a newer, progressive part of Portland, and one I'd been meaning to explore more of, since I'm usually confined as a music student at Reed to more South-Easterly parts of Portland. Branded a minor by a blue astronaut, my stamp granted access to the balcony. The rest (21+) got a guitar—black, electric—and, as per usual, were let in below. On the performance docket was Haydn, Weber, and Schumann. The space, tall and dreamily lit, revealed the stage, just big enough for the four members—J Freivogel (1st violin), Sae Niwa, (2nd violin), Rachel Henderson Freivogel (cello) and Sam Quintal (viola).

They started with the Haydn String Quartet No. 66 in G Major, Op. 77, No. 1 ("Lobkowitz"). The smallness of the space complimented the quartet's precise and controlled delicacies, making them crisp and potent. The fluctuations of their facial expressions were clear and matched those of their bodies and of the music. Such closeness exposed the guts of their communication: synced with mechanical precision but rendered with piercing emotional sensitivity, with the swells, growths, dissonances, and resolutions of the piece woven tightly into the performance. It all enhanced, even the most sparse and soft parts, as an amplified intimacy.

Then, a change of pace, and a more direct taking-advantage of that intimacy, with the Webern. They played the first three of the Five Movements for String Quartet, with an active demonstration of Sonata Form, and a brief introduction to 12 tone music and the applicability of old structure to newer harmonic ideas. I appreciated this education very much, as it aimed to broaden the listening capacities of CMNW's audience, who, if not immediately captured by its sound, could at least not help but be rapt by the performative elements of the piece—its rhythms are varied, difficult to predict, and exciting to watch. I could feel everyone in the room stretch their ears to listen against what J called our cultural "inundation of tonality," and seek the development and recapitulation. Important to a listener's experience is a knowledge or effort to understand how a piece was written, I firmly believe, and the efforts made to help us understand the Webern appropriately commanded such active thinking that I could feel horizons broadening around me. I loved to bask in the piece's eeriness, and to feel the sounds dart from performer to performer.

Our involvement was further punctuated by a Q & A session, revealing, among other things, when each artist began to play (from left to right, 2, 3, 4, and 6 years of age). And after a short intermission came Schumann's String Quartet in A Major, Op. 41 No. 5, rounding out the concert in lovely proportion.

In all, the experience was progressive, bringing classical music and making it accessible to Portland in a way it knows best—harmonizing, quite literally, the causal accessibility of Mississippi Studios (and soon the Woods and Someday Lounge) with classical music; pumping it deeper through the musical veins of Portland.