BY JESSIE WANG, LEAD WRITER (COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL AWARENESS)
Do you remember how you felt after you completed your very first industry placement?
While most uni students would probably say they felt burnt out after their first-ever placement, one group of music-educator friends from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music decided they’d ride the wave after experiencing their taste of primary school teaching. They were inspired to change traditional forms of “music education” and “music performance”. So they created Quart-Ed.
Such is the ethos that underlies all of Quart-Ed’s performances. Whether that’s combining classical repertoire with hip-hop or music from Indigenous composers, Quart-Ed plays music by “anyone and everyone”. And the same goes for the audience, too – whether it’s primary schools kids from regional New South Wales, or kids with special needs, anyone and everyone can be part of Quart-Ed’s collaborative performances.
We chat with Quart-Ed about the journey so far, and what lies ahead before the group plays at Konzertprojekt’s curated Vivid event Greyscale this May 31.
Editor’s note: Quart-Ed is Sarah Qiu, Connor Malanos, Karen Cortez, and Caitlin Sandiford. The group collaborated to respond to these questions, but individual names are listed where relevant.
Who is Quart-Ed? And how did you get started?
Quart-Ed is made up of four music-educator friends that met at the Sydney Conservatorium. We created Quart-Ed with a wish to bring our string playing and education skills into one experience for our audiences. We were fresh off our first placement as primary school teachers, eager to make this a reality.
One particular music education principle helped us shape our programs: pluralism. A pluralist music education is one that validates multiple styles of music, music learning, and music creation in the classroom. We wanted to reflect this in a string focus in our performances: string instruments are not just for Western art music.
In our own performance lives, the four of us have found joy in playing all sorts of music on strings, from hip-hop to folk music, to newly composed music and film music, so we wanted to bring all these things into our performances.
Our first performance opportunity was at Clairgate Public School, where our cellist Karen Cortez was undertaking her placement. Giant Steps Sydney also welcomed us with open arms in our early days, and we got to learn so much from the resident music therapists there.
Quart-Ed aims to have interactive performances that inform, educate, and entertain. How does it do that?
When we prepare for performances, our primary aim is making our time with our audience as engaging as we can. This is where our music education background comes in to play. At the moment, body percussion is always featured in our programs as this is such an accessible way to help people actively engage with the music. We also like to give the opportunity for students to conduct us, as we feel it gives them a sense of agency, leadership and responsibility – plus, it’s a fun way to learn about speed/tempo in music. We also love to program some good sing-along songs – Moana’s How Far I’ll Go is currently a big favourite in primary schools.
In [our violinist] Caitlin Sandiford’s Something About the Ocean, the students join us in creating an ocean soundscape using body percussion (like shushing, rubbing your palms together, and lightly patting your laps) as we play. So not only are the kids listening to us, but they get to create music alongside us. We’ve had some truly magical renditions of this piece, and it’s amazing to hear how different they all turn out!
What kind of music does Quart-Ed play?
Quart-Ed plays any and all kinds of music, provided we like it and we think it’s interesting! The music education degree at the con really encourages a pluralist approach that engages with all types of music, and we like to think we do that pretty well.
Students have heard us perform How Far I’ll Go from Disney’s Moana, Stevie Wonder’s Isn’t She Lovely, Vivaldi’s Summer, the jazz standard Autumn Leaves, Mussorgsky’s In the Hall of the Mountain King, just to name a few! We have also started dabbling in folk music and folk-style playing, since we were introduced to it by singer/cello/songwriter Monique Clare.
This pluralism is also reflected in how we create our music: Sometimes we play straight off sheet music, sometimes we arrange our own things, and sometimes we learn something entirely aurally!
We also play a lot of contemporary music and often collaborate with Australian composers. Before this [upcoming concert in Vivid], we’ve previously worked with Konzertprojekt composers and brought their works to schools, and we’ve worked with composer-educator James Humberstone and rapper Luka Lesson in their co-creation, Odysseus: Live.
Our own violinist Caitlin Sandiford has also recently started composing for us, and we are so excited to play her most recent work Something About the Ocean at our concert.
What kind of audience does Quart-Ed play for?
As educators, it is really important to us that we tailor our program for whoever may happen to be in front of us so they get the most memorable and musical experience. Therefore, Quart-Ed plays for anyone and everyone.
We recently did a regional tour in Albury, in partnership with the Murray Conservatorium, where we played for many primary-aged school students, as well as some older kids with special needs.
Can you share a particularly memorable performance experience?
CONNOR: Flying down to Melbourne to be the string section for a hip-hop opera retelling of Homer’s Odyssey was not only memorable for its intense eight-hour rehearsal sessions but because it was a culmination of decades of experience from a wide variety of creative artists – composers, actors, singers, instrumentalists, poets, conductors, cinematographer, united to towards a shared creative vision.
KAREN: We had a lot of great moments on our Albury tour. We walked into this performance feeling pretty tired since it was the end of the week, but the kids totally turned it around with their enthusiasm for singing How Far I’ll Go with us. We didn’t tell them what we were going to play, so the first few bars of the intro was just kids yelling ‘IT’S MOANA!!’ every couple of seconds. It was so cute. Such a great mood.
If there is one thing that music educators can do to change the world, what do you think it is?
SARAH: Sharing music in an engaging way can be incredibly fun and powerful. I think if one can share the joy and beauty of music that touches the soul of even just one other person, you’ve changed the world for the better.
CAITLIN: Music provides people with the unique opportunity to learn about themselves and others as humans. Through practising the skills of listening, performing, collaborating, composing, and improvising, students of music develop their cognitive, social, and emotional facilities. Moreover, music provides people with a unique means of self-expression that can be shared with others in an incredibly fun way.
CONNOR: Music is an incredible platform for collaboration without competition. Getting people working together towards a common goal, expressing themselves, and exploring new ideas is the ultimate aim for educating a highly functional human being. Music also just happens to be a really fun way of facilitating that experience!
KAREN: I’m a huge ensemble nut. Ensembles are such complex organisms that, at their cores, are about achieving a shared goal by communicating, listening, and reacting; knowing when it’s your turn to shine and when it’s your turn to give. It has always been a dream of mine to show everyone what we can achieve if we treated each other like we were part of an ensemble. I reckon we would have a shot at solving some pretty big problems in today’s world.
Talk us through what to expect from composer-curator Liam Mulligan and composer David Tocknell’s works in Greyscale.
Both works combine our skills of singing and beatboxing simultaneously whilst playing. These works would be unique to Quart-Ed, and this Greyscale concert to say the least! If you’re into Jacob Collier, Liam’s funktastic piece Hedron will be a real treat to the polyrhythm fanatics out there.
For those who prefer more folk-style music, they can look forward to David’s piece Many Shades of Light and Dark, which consists of two contrasting movements that reflect the different moods of lightness and darkness and the nuances in between. We will also be playing David’s Elements – another funky, lopsided rhythmical bop.
Why have you chosen to include additional Australian works on your program? And how does Australian music speak to your ethos as a quartet?
Apart from our program brief to perform Australian works, we have really enjoyed putting this program together because, as future music educators, it’s important to validate Australian music as worth learning and studying in our classrooms – to show our students that they can be musicians, creators, and artists, too!
We’re so excited to be able to offer you so many different flavours of Australian music. We have our stock-standard ‘art music’ composers, our newly written works, and a great arrangement of Kardajala Kirridarra’s Warmala. Through these works, we are able to represent all sorts of composers – male and female, established and emerging, Indigenous […] and those who have become Australian.
Greyscale is part of Light Qualities, a Konzertprojekt-curated mini-festival that features in Vivid. See Quart-Ed perform in Greyscale from 7pm May 31 in St Stephens Uniting Church, Sydney.
You can read more about Light Qualities and the all-Australian program in our interview with co-curators Liam Mulligan and Sophie Van Dijk.
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If you like, you can thank Jessie for volunteering her time for Australian arts journalism. No amount too much or little 🙂
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