by Kyle Macmillan
Two members of the Amara Quartet sounded downright giddy recently when talking about the fellowship that has brought the group to the Colorado Music Festival for five weeks this summer. And why not?
The opportunity for performances and coaching from the likes of the acclaimed visiting Danish String Quartet would be valuable for any budding ensemble, but it’s especially meaningful for the Amara because it’s the group’s first professional engagement ever.
“We were sitting here and practicing in the living room of the apartment and just looking out into the mountains this morning,” said cellist Kathryn Fakeley. “And we were saying, ‘What a dream this is, to be able to have this place to go and to totally focus on our craft and do what we love and to have the gift of time without many other responsibilities.’”
From Classmates to Quartet
The four members of the Amara—violinists Hanami Froom and Ben Linton, violist Govanny Brown and Fakeley—met at the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. Enrollment in the elite program is limited each year to 27 top young string players who receive full scholarships. It was founded by McDuffie, an acclaimed violin soloist and a native of Macon, who drew on his contacts to put together a faculty that includes David Kim, concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and Lawrence Dutton, violist of the Emerson String Quartet.
“It’s a small school, so we have all been playing with each other for awhile,” Fakeley said. “Our group—we first played together last year, and we had so much fun doing it that we just bonded as players but also our personalities worked together very well. Then we started to have a lot more performance opportunities and we were able to put our name out there as a quartet.”
And speaking of names—never an easy decision for any new ensemble—the players settled on “Amara,” which means “love” in Spanish. “I thought it would be easy to remember, so we just decided on that immediately,” Froom said. (The group should not be confused with an all-female ensemble of the same name in Portugal, which performs music from a traditional genre in that country known as fado.)
A Fellowship That Opened the Door
The Amara’s journey to the festival this summer actually began in noviembre, when CMF’s Music Director Peter Oundjian conducted a concert of the Macon-Mercer Symphony Orchestra (a mix of McDuffie Center and Atlanta Symphony players). The Amara members connected with him during that visit, and the conductor invited the group to audition for the Festival Fellows Program.
Launched in 2021 and funded by the Boulder-based Sei Solo Foundation, the program provides mentorship, networking and performance opportunities to outstanding emerging artists from underrepresented backgrounds. “We have since seen many fellows secure professional opportunities through relationships formed during the program,” said Elizabeth McGuire, the festival’s Executive Director.
The Amara’s studies at the festival will include weekly coaching sessions with Oundjian, who in addition to being a longtime conductor is a former first violinist of the famed Tokyo String Quartet. “We’re very excited to have the opportunity, because we all love him so much,” Fakeley said.
Sharing Music with Festival Audiences
In addition, the group will perform twice during the summer series starting with an appearance at a sold-out gala on julio 11, which marks the 50th anniversary of the festival and the 30th anniversary of its affiliate, the Center for Musical Arts. The event has a 1970s theme, and the four musicians have their period apparel all ready to go.
“Of course, we’re going to do some ABBA music,” Fakeley said. “Since we play primarily classical music, it’s been the most fun thing to step aside from that and do some of those [pop] classics that everyone knows, loves and recognizes.” In addition, it will perform a snippet from Strum, a popular 2006 work by Jessie Montgomery, former composer-in-residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
On Agosto 5, the quartet will present a community concert featuring works by Dmitri Shostakovich and Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and the full version of Strum, which Montgomery wrote originally for cello quintet, later revising it for string quartet and string orchestra. “It’s a really fun, pizzicato-y piece—light and dance-like,” the composer said in a 2021 Chicago Symphony interview. Rounding things out will be what the group hopes will be some “fun and exciting” encores.
Looking Ahead
And if all that wasn’t enough, the four members of the Amara will be performing as members of the CMF Orchestra, joining professional musicians from orchestras across the country. “It will be interesting balancing both orchestra and chamber music, but we really get the best of both worlds,” Fakeley said.
Is the ultimate goal of the Amara to become a professional quartet? The cellist said it’s too soon to make any decisions along those lines, especially considering that some of ensemble’s players will be applying to graduate school in the fall.
“Who knows?” she said. “Maybe next year we’ll try for a competition. We’ll see what happens. We love playing together, and it’s always so fun. We really hope to continue as long as we can.”