Chamber music world stardom. That’s where the Isidore String Quartet very unexpectedly found themselves in 2022. They were barely out of the Juilliard School and had formed their group just three years earlier.
How’d it happen? It involves Alberta! To make a long story short, they won the Banff International String Quartet Competition. Two weeks later they had signed with management company David Rowe Artists and launched on a brand-new trajectory.
“It changed everything for the group,” says the group’s cellist, Joshua McClendon. The other members are Adrian Steele on violin, Phoenix Avalon on violin and Devin Moore on viola.
“The entirety of the last year of our lives was a result of winning the competition,” continues McClendon. “We’re very grateful to the Banff Centre and to the jury for taking the chance on us. Our lives would not be anywhere near what they are now without it.”
When they applied, they weren’t even sure they’d be accepted, he says. And yet here they are, touring internationally.
“There wasn’t much of a buffer period between coming out of school and the competition win and being thrust into this new lifestyle. We went from, as a quartet, playing maybe two concerts per year and after that going into a schedule of playing 100 or so. It’s been quite a lot to get used to.”
And they’ll be in Alberta soon, gracing stages of the Calgary Pro Musica Society and the Edmonton Chamber Music Society.
All under 25 years old, they find it meaningful to represent young, diverse people within the classical music world, McClendon says.
“You can always of course identify with people who are in any way sort of similar to you,” he says. “There have been a lot of younger quartets emerging over the last couple of years and it has been really inspiring to see.”
Meeting as students at Juilliard, the first time all four played together was at a sight reading party.
“There was instantly something that we felt was quite special about just playing together,” McClendon says. “We just on a whim decided to register as a group at school. We didn’t expect anything long term, we were just four friends who decided to play together.”
They received very positive feedback from their coaches and mentors, he says.
“They were the first ones to push for something more serious, they were hearing things that the four of us really weren’t at the time.”
Formed only in 2019, they of course had to take 2020 off, reforming in 2021. They had just enough repertoire to apply to the 2022 Banff competition. And the rest, as they say, is history.
“What I love about our group is that we’re four very different artists, four very different people, and we have never really tried to sound like one another,” says McClendon, when asked about the quartet’s sound. “I think you can definitely hear both the collective and the individual, we are playing in a way that I think is super fulfilling. It keeps things exciting.”
The Isidore String Quartet performs in Calgary April 13 and Edmonton April 20.
The quartet performing in the Banff International String Quartet Competition, 2022:
