Meet Balourdet String Quartet
Balourdet String Quartet performs our Week Nine Program on August 22 & 24.
Interview with Kneisel Hall alumnus and cellist, Russell Houston.
Tell us a little bit about how and when your quartet formed, and any early mentors.
Our quartet formed in the fall of 2018 at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. Angela, Justin, and I had met the summer prior at the Taos School of Music and had wanted to keep playing together for our chamber credit- Justin had played in another group with Ben and introduced him to us. We truly just started out playing together just to be able to hang out as friends and eat pizza over the weekends. Our very first mentors were the faculty at Rice, including James Dunham of the Cleveland Quartet and Norman Fischer of the Concord Quartet.
How has the quartet changed over the years, either through members or artistically?
We’re the same group we were when we started in 2018! Over the years, we’ve grown a lot! We’ve always made our number one priority the expression of our love for the music, but how we’ve communicated that has changed with us. As we grow, we learn to make space for each of us to grow our individual selves and cultivate a rehearsal environment that focuses on exploration and the adventure that is the music we get to play.
Who was your most influential mentor?
The Cleveland Quartet is the group whose playing made each of us fall in love with the art of the string quartet, and having the opportunity to work with its members (Paul Katz, Don Weilerstein, Martha Katz, James Dunham, and Atar Arad) at NEC, Rice, and IU has been really special. You could say we’re superfans!
What is your favorite performance venue?
Every summer, we do a residency with the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, and alongside giving chamber music coachings, we help to build community within the entire festival. Playing for an audience of so many friends and young people excited about chamber music has a palpably different feeling and reminds all of us why we do what we do.
Have you ever had something dramatically unexpected happen that impacted a performance?
What hasn’t happened? I’m not sure what drama I can put into writing but I can certainly say you experience all of life with your quartet and that each time something happens we’ve been lucky to each have three friends who are on the same team helping to make sure everyone has a good time and sounds and plays their best.
Does traveling positively or negatively affect your creativity?
Traveling and playing a lot of concerts have certainly had a positive influence on our artistry! Getting to visit, experience, and play in so many kinds of spaces and meet a variety of incredible people broadens your perspective on music, art, and life itself. I feel really lucky to be able to do what I do and learn a lot about myself. I’m not sure I otherwise would’ve had a chance to learn.
Do you have a favorite location where you like to rehearse or feel that you work best?
We certainly love to rehearse at home in our rehearsal studio, but it’s really special when we’ve had chances for longer “rehearsal retreats” in idyllic settings, like our residencies at Avaloch Farm and the Banff Centre. I’m particularly looking forward to spending a few days of rehearsal retreat at Kneisel Hall this summer, as well as showing the rest of my quartet some of my favorite spots!!
What do you do in your free time?
We had no clue what to do in our free time when we first started touring – at first it was just getting a special meal in whatever city we were in but that proved a bit unhealthy… these days we’ve picked up healthier habits, like working out in the mornings even when we’re on tour.
For a little while, I actually tried to make trying local milk my hobby since we were playing in a lot of dairy farm towns- but I’m lactose intolerant and this didn’t prove sustainable!