Concorda: Poppy aged 16

A huge thank you to both Thomastik-Infeld and JDCMF for giving me the opportunity to attend the Concorda Chamber music course. Alongside enjoying spending time with so many lovely people, I have learnt so much on this course, a day in and the results already become clear.

Watching the Heath quartet and Ophelia quartet was truly an inspiring experience, seeing the communication and the balance between every member of the quartet transformed how I lead my chamber groups on the course. I became much more aware of the importance of listening and knowing everyone else’s parts, feeling as though every member is as important as the other in making a piece of music, like an artwork, that has been contributed to by everyone.

As well as the chamber music, the improvisation and expression sessions contributed to aspects of chamber music playing too. Through these sessions we worked on communication and responding to other players as well as the individuality of each part influencing the others: one person would come up with an idea and others would take that idea and respond to it and develop it further. I felt that these sessions really made me and everyone aware of the other players and then improved the eye contact and passing of musical lines in our chamber music sessions.

Poppy (16)