Afiara Quartet Residency
Last week, OrKidstra was fortunate enough to have a very enriching experience thanks to the Ottawa Chamber Music Society’s “Music for All” arts education and outreach initiative: the Afiara Quartet dedicated three days (March 4 – 6) to coaching, rehearsing and performing alongside members of OrKidstra’s chamber groups. The Afiara Quartet is the Glenn Gould School Fellowship Quartet-in-Residence at Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music and is the winner of many awards. The four members are committed to creating new programs that expand the concert experience and to the education of school-age youth. The Afiara Quartet performed a fun, interactive educational concert for our KidSingers and KiddlyWinks on the Wednesday. They rehearsed for countless hours with our chamber groups and gave amazing insight and feedback to our students. All this activity culminated on Thursday, March 6 with a very special performance. The Afiara Quartet was joined on stage at the Bronson Centre by the Despax Quartet – four talented siblings whose first violinist, Cendrine, is our remarkable Director of KiddlyWinks – and our OrKidstra Chamber groups. The OrKidstra Chamber groups come in every Friday for an extra rehearsal. The groups are composed up of Dedication Students and many Commitment Level students who then “hang-out” at the OrKidstra office for the weekly Youth Group.
The audience was treated to Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No.3, Mozart’s Quintet for Clarinet and Strings (performed by our very own OrKidstra Quintet and Peter Perez, 13, as the clarinet soloist), Beethoven’s String Quartet in E Flat Major and Felix Mendelssohn’s rousing Octet for Strings.
We want to extend yet another thank you to the Ottawa Chamber Music Society for not only bringing the Afiara Quartet and Despax Quartet together but for choosing us to also be involved with such an amazing opportunity! Our students have yet to stop talking about how much fun they had and how much they learned from the experience!
