This year’s Grammy Awards was one to remember for Texas State’s ensemble-in-residence, Attacca Quartet, as they took home their first ever Grammy.
The classical string quartet composed of violinist Amy Schroeder, violinist Nathan Schram, cellist Andrew Yee and violinist Domenic Salerni, won their first Grammy for best chamber music/small ensemble performance for their work on Caroline Shaw’s album “Orange.”
Attacca Quartet has played a significant role in Texas State’s School of Music program since 2016. As an ensemble-in-resident, the quartet assists the program by collaborating with students and faculty performers as well as hosting classes for students. They have also lent their talent and knowledge to students by performing in concerts as a featured artist.
Michael Ippolito, assistant professor of composition at Texas State, has worked closely with the quartet since their days at Julliard when the quartet was the graduate quartet-in-residence and Ippolito was getting his master’s and doctorate. Ippolito said working with them on his album “Songlines“ was a great opportunity to bring them to Texas State to be more involved.
“We collaborated on a number of things in New York and Detroit,” Ippolito said. “In 2016, we were able to fund, through a Texas State grant, making a recording of all my music and released that album in 2017.”
The members of the quartet paid their most recent visit to the Texas State’s School of Music this past October and plan to return sometime this year. Ippolito said it has been great to see the quartet grow with the students and is hopeful they will continue to work with students.
“Because they’ve been here for four academic years in a row, they’ve seen some students from their freshman year all the way to graduation,” Ippolito said. “They’ve been seeing them really grow and develop every time they come back and I think that’s been very special and different from the wonderful guest artists who come in every year.”
Azariah Reese, music senior, said working with the quartet during masterclasses, which gives students a chance to play and get critiqued on ways to improve, was great.
“I thought it was kid-in-a-candy store-ish to see people with that sort of mastery in their instruments and putting it together was really amazing,” Reese said. “It was a really comfortable environment to make mistakes. I think their impact is still the same even with that level of recognition.”
Yee, cellist for Attacca Quartet, said they were able to see students grow both musically and as people.
Yee said the whole Grammy experience was like a dream and to win a Grammy was really rewarding to see their hard work pay off.
The Grammy ceremony that takes place before the televised one had the quartet members there. They sat through a couple of hours before their win was announced.
“They said our name, and it was really surreal. Every commercial break I would turn to my girlfriend and she would say ‘You just won a Grammy’” Yee said. “It’s such a weird, exciting feeling because you work really hard your whole life and Grammy’s sort of seem like the thing everyone else gets; not the thing that you get and to have all the work that we put into it pay off was really amazing.”
The quartet has a busy year ahead with a Beethoven anniversary performance in June in New York, a spring Asia tour, many more performances and a trip back to Texas State.
For information on Attacca Quartet’s music and upcoming tour, visit their www.attaccaquartet.com.