In January, Susan Franklin, the executive directer of Portland Summer Ensembles (PSE), asked me to pull together a quartet to perform at a PSE Benefit Concert sponsored by the chamber group Mousai Remix. PSE is a week long intensive summer music program in Portland which I attended for 3 years. The coaches for PSE are members of the Oregon Symphony (many of the principles) and Jun Iwasaki, concertmaster of Nashville Symphony.
For this benefit concert, I pulled together a quartet comprised of PSE alumni (most of us are also in PYP as well). The members of the group were Yun Teng (15) violin, myself (15) violin, Eaton Lin (13) viola, and Daniel Scoggins (16) cello. We worked on the 1st movement of the Beethoven String Quartet no. 4 op. 18. We had about 4 rehearsals at my house, and were coached for 2 hours by Marilyn de Oliveira who is the assistant principle cellist of the Oregon Symphony and a member of Mousai Remix.
We performed to a very enthusiastic audience at the Ivories Jazz Club on February 24th as part of the Mousai Remix Concert, PSE benefit concert. I’m amazed that we pulled this off with all of our busy schedules! As a result of that evening, PSE raise $1,500 to benefit scholarship students at the program. Thank you to Susan Franklin for inviting us to perform, my friends in the chamber group for helping out, Marilyn de Oliveira for coaching us, and to all who gave to PSE!