Meet Jonah Sirota
By Matthew Dane

JAVS and the AVS website are pleased to welcome Jonah Sirota as our new online Travelogue writer. Jonah is the violist of the Chiara String Quartet, ensemble-in-residence at the University of Nebraska and recently chosen as Blodgett visiting artists-in-residence at Harvard University for 2008. As a soloist, he has won several solo competitions, including 3rd prize in Naumburg last year, performed concertos with several orchestras, and commissioned many new solo works along the way. It is his life experience in chamber music however that tells his story best. The interview focuses on the two most significant aspects of chamber music in Jonah’s life: his deep-rooted connection with Greenwood Music Camp, and the evolution of the Chiara String Quartet culminating in their most recent performance focus, “Chamber Music in Any Chamber.” Greenwood is a chamber music camp in Cummington, Massachusetts of long tradition, with two summer sessions of approximately fifty campers each: a two-week “kiddie camp” for ages 8-13, and a five-week “big camp” for ages 14-18. Jonah’s experience as camper, counselor, and faculty are all as a part of the latter.

MD: When did you first attend Greenwood, and what were your first impressions?

JS: I attended Greenwood the summer of 1990, the first of four summers. I had visited the summer before and had been totally impressed by all of these people seeming to have such an intense and fun time with music.  I remember hearing a concert and then seeing people up at the main house afterwards gathered around a piano, singing Beatles songs and other things- but doing it really well, with the pianist actually playing the real harmonies.  I should have probably been the most impressed by the concert- but I think the fact that the concert was really great, plus the fact that everyone seemed to let the spirit of their performances permeate their entire lives together, was amazing and new to me.

MD: What did you immediately learn from being there?

JS: Before my first year there, I had hardly played any chamber music. Every piece I played was a revelation. I didn't even know enough to know what pieces I was supposed to want to play! The first week I played 4th violin in the slow movement of the Mendelssohn Octet.  Not a bad way to start!  I will always remember that experience--eight of us crowded into a small practice cabin and trying to create some semblance of balance (I think a counselor in the group kept reminding us that the melody rarely belonged to most of us!).  Every moment of that movement made me want to cry.  I still feel that way about it.

MD: What inspiration has lasted longer and become part of your musical beliefs?

JS: It's amazing how much of what first seemed important at Greenwood has stayed important on further reflection.  The idea that a group can become something more than the sum of its parts; more specifically the idea that in chamber music, interactions themselves are more important than any one voice. I believe that strongly. Also the idea that putting great energy into something you care about deeply can make you happy.  This is a good lesson for an adolescent to learn.  I feel very lucky to have figured this out as early as I did. Greenwood was, and continues to be, hard to get admitted to- but once there, there was very little competition.  You can't have a real chamber music experience and stay in competition with those around you.

MD: Are there specific moments/situations/performances from this time that you consider pivotal to your musical life?

JS: I was assigned the slow movement of Op 132 Beethoven my last summer as a camper.  We performed it twice and also in a masterclass for Joel Krosnick.  That piece made me decide to pursue a music career. It was like "Knowing that music like this exists, how can I not play it?"  Also, I started as a violinist at Greenwood.  It was John Ziarko, a coach and viola teacher at the camp, who recommended that I try the viola, and then was my first teacher.  He also assigned me that Op 132. So I owe him, and Greenwood, a debt for finding the viola at all, and then finding a reason to need to play it.

MD: How has your relationship with the camp developed over time?

JS: I went through the obligatory withdrawal after my time as a student, and felt that MY experience as a camper was somehow special, and that these new campers just didn't understand... Then I was a counselor for a year at the end of college. That was a different view.  I came back as an alumnus to play some informal recitals once my quartet got going.  I was always amazed at how certain core things about the place stayed very constant, even as my own relationship with it was subtly changing.  At first, I was upset that I wasn't experiencing everything for the first time anymore.  Then I started realizing how special it was that the place still provided those experiences for new generations every year.  The constancy of that I really attribute to the incredible leadership of Deb Sherr (only the second camp director in Greenwood's 75 year history) and the great idealism of the camp's founders, Bunny and Dwight Little.

MD: How does teaching at Greenwood inspire you?

JS: It recharges me. The kids knock rust off of their chamber music chops during the first week of camp, and then from there on out they are surging into often unexplored depths of awareness with incredible repertoire.  I find that they create the standard of integrity and feeling which I spend the rest of my year seeking to recreate.  When I ask students there to do something in the music, they make it a life-or-death goal.  They are dream students, and really understand the point of chamber music.

MD: Talk about the Chiara Quartet’s beginnings.

JS: I joined the Chiara Quartet a couple of years after they formed at the Musicorda Festival.  I had already started my undergrad degree at Rice, and gotten to know cellist Greg Beaver there.  Also, I had known one of the violinists, Rebecca Fischer, practically my whole life as her parents were close friends with my own.  The summer after my freshman year in college, I went with the group (which then consisted of Greg, Rebecca, and violinist Rachel Noyes) to a couple of festivals.  We loved working together, and even though we were spread throughout the country (Rebecca in NYC at Columbia/Juilliard, and Rachel at the Cleveland Institute) we knew that we wanted to try to continue working together.  My first summer with the group was really fun.  We were all just so happy to find people who cared so much about quartet playing.  I think that made us feel very lucky and motivated us to try to keep the group going.  We auditioned during the next year for the Aspen quartet program and were really flabbergasted when we were accepted!

Chiara Quartet
Photo by Anthony Hawley

MD: Since the quartet started forming when you were all fairly young, how did its development fit in with your own individual development?

JS: Honestly, between Greenwood and the quartet, there was never very long that chamber music wasn't at or near the center of my focus. The solo stuff, a great orchestral training at Rice, these were very important and useful- but I think I tried to approach them all with a chamber music sensibility.  Chiara took some time off later on, but I chose to go other chamber music festivals (Yellow Barn, Norfolk, and Marlboro) during those times.

MD: Your quartet was chosen for The Juilliard School's Lisa Arnhold Residency. What sorts of opportunities and responsibilities did the quartet have in this position?

JS: At Juilliard we got to work closely with the Juilliard Quartet, who really have been our most important mentors.  We also served as teaching assistants for the chamber music performance class run by Earl Carlyss.  The residency also included a major Alice Tully Hall recital each year.  It was a really important, great experience for us.

MD: What have been the quartet’s most influential experiences since leaving Juilliard? What are your current interests as a group, and what is the idea behind “Chamber Music in Any Chamber”?

JS: The quartet has been through several stages. When we finished our individual Juilliard degrees, we started playing with Julie Yoon, whom we met at Juilliard, and right out of school we got a CMA rural residency grant to live in Grand Forks, North Dakota for two years.  This was a great chance to just hunker down and learn to play as a professional quartet, learn rep, etc.  At the same time, outreach was an important part of the residency, and we loved learning how to bring Brahms (or Berg) to audiences of many different types (school kids, mall-goers, nursing home residents, beet farmers, etc).  After our time there, we moved back to New York (for the quartet’s residency in Juilliard), won the Astral Artistic Services audition, won first prize in Fischoff, and started to build a real concretizing career.

It was more recently that we started to feel that these two sides of our career- the formal "concert" side and the "outreach" side- were artificially separate.  We started feeling that all concerts should reach out to the audience, and that "outreach" was sometimes used to mean getting "underserved" people educated about a "high" art tradition, something which kind of assumed the audience's ignorance. We started wondering whether there could be a better approach, one that would let people experience a concert wherever they were at, without condescension. While it is true that quartet music is a deep pool of aesthetic experiences, we began to think the goal should be inviting newcomers to jump in, rather than trying to give them a passing sprinkle.  That's how our club performances, “Chamber Music in Any Chamber,” got started. These are real concerts, just in a different format and setting, and the experience we get out of it has been edifying- we believe that the audience’s experience is, as well! Generally we also play a lot of new pieces, because our experience of playing quartets is that it is a living, breathing tradition, and we enjoy sharing that. Our performances in "non-traditional" venues have also influenced our concert hall dates, by how we talk to the audience, and by inviting audience-members on stage at intermission to chat with us about the music.