Touring and Festivals

As it has been for musicians for all times, my various AQ colleagues and I not only enjoyed the study and playing of the greatest classical string quartet repertoire for our own sense of accomplishment and pleasure but experienced a desire to share our expertise with concert-going audiences around the world.  This required being taken on by professional management.  In 1977, when the Quartet won multiple prizes in international competitions, we were living in Pennsylvania, where we had our first residency at Marywood College.  It seemed logical to approach the Joanne Rile Artist Management in Philadelphia, who became our first artist representative.

Artist Managements are businesses and must believe that the musician they represent can make a profit for them.  Typically, the manager arranges concerts for the artists they represent and collects a percentage of the fee paid per concert plus the cost of expenses to arrange the concerts.  For nearly four-decades the career of the Audubon Quartet was successfully represented by various managers in addition to Joanne Rile, including Anders Artists Management in California, and the Todd Stanton in New York and Lois Scott artist managements in New Jersey.

The Quartet was fortunate to have a college residency from the beginning of its career in 1974. During the ensuing four decades our other residencies included more than twenty years at Virginia Tech (VPI), and a final residency at Shenandoah Conservatory in in Winchester, Virginia.  Although a considerable amount concert travel took place during all of the residencies, the majority of our professional engagements, recording projects, and international travel occurred during the Blacksburg residency at Virginia Tech.

The success of any performing ensemble is often defined by the number of initial and, especially, return engagements to which it is invited.  The Audubon Quartet gave many hundreds of public concerts over 40 years, including Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center and Lincoln Center in New York, Cecília Meireles Hall in Rio de Janeiro, Red Tower Theater in Beijing, Santa Cecilia Hall in Rome, Shanghai Concert Hall in China, Queen Elizabeth and Wigmore Halls in London.

In addition to specific individual concert engagements, the reputation of the Audubon Quartet prompted many national and international music festivals to extend invitations to perform, often on multiple occasions.  The list of these music festivals between 1977 and 2017, includes:

Beth Daniel Music Festival, Israel
Chautauqua Summer Music Festival, Chautauqua, NY (25 Summers)
Festival International de Quatuors à Cordes, Seillans, France
Festival Villa-Lobos, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Gretna Music Festival, Mt. Gretna, PA (36 Summers)
Highlands Chamber Music Festival, Highlands, NC
Idyllwild Summer Music Festival, Idyllwild, CA
Klasik Keyifler Chamber Music Festival in Cappadocia, Turkey / click to visit 2009 blog
Marrowstone Music Festival, Forts Flagler and Townsend, WA
Maverick Music Festival, Woodstock, NY
Newport Music Festival, Newport, RI
Niederstozingen Musiktage, Niederstozingen, Germany
Preludes Festival, Reston, VA
Sommerset Chamber Music Festival, Sommerset, PA
SPSV Music Festival, Xi’an, China
Tsingtao Music Festival, Tsingtao, China

A gallery of photos taken during the career of the Audubon Quartet