Audubon Quartet Travel

After the competition successes and the CBS notoriety, Joanne Rile was able to arrange many tours, in and around our region and across America.

In the early days, members of the AQ were living a shoestring budget.  The Marywood College residency, still tied to the Young artist residency project at SUNY-Binghamton, was bolstered by a “Pilot Project Grant”, arranged by Composer Ezra Laderman, SUNY-Binghamton’s professor of composition, who had become the deputy director of the National Endowment of the Arts.  Some years later, Ezra would become a champion of the Audubon Quartet, composing his 6^th Quartet for us, entitled the “The Audubon”, with the underlying theme of the work, “I will survive”.  The AQ recorded that work for the RCA Red Seal label in November 1985.  Ezra Laderman remained a friend of the Audubon Quartet throughout our career, not only when he became director of music programs at the NEA, but also during his association with the American Academy in Rome and as the Dean of Yale University School of Music.

Returning to the post competition days and the small operating budget, the newly formed Audubon Quartet, Inc., leased a Chevrolet Beauville van from the local Scranton dealer on a monthly payment plan. This was a big decision for us to make, but it served us well for years, as we were committed to the idea of “have quartet, will travel (by van)”.

This is not to suggest that the AQ did not engage in air travel, but since Joanne Rile was able to book a substantial number of dates, many consecutively, we were able to accept the dates most quartets would be forced to decline.

Travel in the AQ van was often fun we had many light-hearted driving adventures.  Along with acquiring the van, and knowing we might drive a little faster that the speed limit, we invested in a CB Radio, which was a MUST for non-tourist travel in those days.

Sharon came up with our “CB handle”, which was “punkin’ pie”. One of the 2 colors of our original 2-tone van was pumpkin brown and the other was white, resembling whipped cream.

After the end of our first lease, we renewed it and the pumpkin colored van was replaced by a shiny bright red-topped van, which we eventually purchased, used for several more years and, then sold in 1984.  Management always informed concert presenters to be on the lookout for a red and white van.

Sharon got really good at using CB slang like, “Breaker, Breaker one-niner, what’s your 20?”, or “Bear Trap” at a particular mile marker number.  In the history of the AQ, the only time we were stopped was once out in Kansas and one after a concert in Trenton, NJ.

During one trip to a concert in South Carolina, we found ourselves on US Route 21.  Most of the time, Dennis served as the designated map-reader and the others would take turns driving.  On this particular journey, we began to think we were lost and coined the phrase “on Route 21”, whenever we found ourselves lost in a rehearsal of a particular composition.

During the years of van travel, we were stopped only twice, once in Kansas and the other after a concert in Trenton, NJ.  We got a ticket in Kansas, but not in NJ.  The fact we were driving a van in our full dress clothes, with instrument cases quit visible in the back, must have amused the NJ trooper and he dismissed us, while a smile on his face.

Two notable AQ concert tours, occurring in 1981, included a cross-country drive from our homes in Scranton, PA, out to perform at CalArts in Valencia, CA and back to Rider College in Lawrenceville, NJ.  This tour included concerts at various locations, beginning with Ardmore, OK at the Goddard Center for Visual and Performing Arts on January 30, 1980. The other following concerts dates on this tour included, Albuquerque, NM, Alamosa, CO, Bozeman, MT, Berkeley, CA, and finally, Valencia, CA, before heading back across country to make the date in New Jersey.

The concert at California Institute of the Arts took place on Monday, February 9, 1981. The next day, February 10, 1981, we started back, driving across the California desert, stopping in Albuquerque for 6 hours, sharing a single motel room to catch a quick nap and take showers, before returning to the drive.

While the temperatures in the desert were very high, the opposite was the case once we left Albuquerque.  It was February and the road conditions were dangerous, due to the freezing temperatures. Knowing we had the New Jersey concert ahead of us on Saturday night, we decided to grit out teeth and plow ahead with haste.

Somewhere, after crossing the Texas state line, we starting talking to one of the truckers on our CB radio. As luck would have it the voice on the other end was friendly.  His CB handle was “blue-eyed blanket ass” and he invited us to stop and get coffee in El Paso at an Interstate truck stop dinner.  He was part of a two-driver long haul truck team that made a weekly run for a carpet manufacture company, between San Diego and Philadelphia.  His tractor-trailer had a huge cab, which contained a king-size bed, where one driver could sleep, while the other drove.  This allowed for non-stop trips back and forth.

We had contemplated dropping Doris off in St. Louis, where her musician husband was touring with the rock show “Beatlemania”.  As we were chatting on the CB, the truck driver suggested they would lead us to St. Louis, so we could make faster time on the road.  Following his truck would allow us to avoid getting stopped by the troopers.

But first, we agreed to stop at the dinner for coffee and a quick bite before continuing on to St. Louis.  At this point, we knew we still had a very long drive ahead and we were both determined to drop Doris off and still make it back in time for the Rider College Concert on Saturday evening.

Arriving at the dinner first, we saw the huge “Rig” pull up and jumping out of the cab was a man about five feet tall, wearing a large western-style black cowboy hat, adorned with a band filled with feathers!  Today’s travelers might be suspect, but in the 1980s America was not so rife with the highway crimes we are all too familiar with today.

After coffee and some chitchat, we jumped into the AQ van and followed “BEBA” to the cut-off to St. Louis.

After delivering Doris to the Holiday Inn where her husband was staying, Dennis, Sharon and I drove like bats out of hell to make Scranton after midnight on Friday, with the plan we would meet Doris at the Scranton airport and drive together to Rider College to play the concert.

There is no existing recording of that concert, to my knowledge, but it might have been a little scrappy… After the concert, we were hosted at a reception at the home of Jeanne Kierman’s parents, who served on the Rider College faculty.  Jeanne had married Norman Fischer, the cellist of the Concord String Quartet and since Jeanne, Norman and I were in the same class at Oberlin, they were charmed to meet me and delighted that the Audubon Quartet had broken our necks to make the concert.

The Second long van tour, made later that year was in the Midwest, beginning with a concert in Kansas City, Mo, followed by concerts at eight campuses of the Kansas State University System, all the way west to Dodge City.  Following Kansas, the AQ performed, in Lincoln, NE, before heading south to perform at the University of Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette, LA and the Chamber Music Society of San Antonio, TX. Another two months of concerts transpired with travel by van, before embarking on the groundbreaking China tour of 1981-82.