Look out for the HSQ in Mexico in August!

We’re happy to announce that the Haven String Quartet will take part in the Chamber Music Festival of San Miguel de Allende in Mexico this summer! Sharing a roster with the Borromeo String Quartet, the Jupiter String Quartet, and the Amernet String Quartet, we are honored to be a part of this world-class festival.

Impressed with the work Music Haven has accomplished in the New Haven community through an urban string quartet residency, the festival in Mexico was eager to invite the HSQ as featured guest artists. We’re so excited to have the opportunity to spread our mission and work to a completely different part of the world!

The HSQ will be in Mexico between August 6-16th, performing for the Embassy in Guadalajara, participating in concerts as part of the festival series, and taking our music to local pueblos for a series of educational concerts.

Many thanks to board member Tom Duffy for arranging this trip. We are thrilled to be a part of the festival, and we guarantee we’ll have lots to report when we return. So stay tuned in late August for news related to our adventures!

click here for more info

Music Haven Evaluation Week

“What were your favorite moments of the year?”
“What did you like about lessons this year?”
“How can we change the lessons to make it better next year?”
“What do you think you can do to make it a better experience next year?”

These are the kinds of questions we have been spending time answering and reflecting over the past several weeks. Improvement and striving for excellence is always on our minds, but this past week, we took it to a whole new level.

Almost 100% of families, however, agreed that they wouldn’t change much about Music Haven.

The following are a few of the responses:

What did you like most about being in Music Haven?
- “I like it because they respect me for who I am.”
- “I liked [that] they took their time with us.”
- “I had fun learning.”
- “I learned stuff that I didn’t learn in my school.”
- “I like that people listen to me.”

What would you change about your lessons with Music Haven?
-“I want to [come to lessons] every day, not just Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
-“Make lessons last longer.”
-“Nothing.”
-”Teachers should bring snacks.”

Did you like Performance Parties? What did you like about them?
-“Yes, because [we] were a team.”
-“Yes, I enjoyed them. I like when everyone comes and celebrates with us.”
-“I did enjoy my performance, because my family was there.”

Ute Brinkmann, Double-Bassist and Luthier Extraordinaire

Ute Brinkmann, violin maker and restorer from Wallingford, has been one of our most generous supporters. She has not only given her expertise and countless hours to Music Haven, she has also encouraged others to do so as well by setting up an instrument donation bank at her shop.

So we were so happy to see Ute join us for our “Three Little Birds” jam session on June 6th, wielding the largest instrument in the band!

We are so proud and grateful to be one of Ute’s sponsorship projects, and we hope that if you ever need thoughtful and meticulous instrument repair work, you will visit our friend and supporter, Ute Brinkmann.

click here to check out Ute Brinkmann’s violin shop

Music Haven Supporters Meet their Match!

Jack Hammer and Ellen Higham, friends and generous supporters of Music Haven, donated several fractional size violins and a viola to Music Haven during our first year.

At our recent Final Performance Party on June 5th, Jack and Ellen connected with Shauna Wilson, a Music Haven violinist, who recently graduated to one of the violins that Jack and Ellen donated.

Shauna, who performed “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” that evening, was thrilled to be able to meet Ellen and Jack. But unbeknownst to Shauna, not only were Jack and Ellen in the audience, they were also playing with her from the back of the room during the “Three Little Birds” play-along.

We hope this is just the start of many musical connections to be made between Shauna and Jack and Ellen!

Final Performance Party is “Most Fun Ever”

ImageTo celebrate a whole year’s worth of hard work and dedication, everyone here at Music Haven rocked out at our Final Performance Party of the year. Held at the Wexler-Grant School cafeteria on June 5th, everyone performed his or her favorite pieces, appearing solo, in small groups, and in large ones too.

It was clear too why the evening’s finale was “the most fun ever,” according to many who were in attendance. Singer Jameka Morrison, Bassist Joe Magar, and Drummer Jeff Jones led all the Music Haven musicians (both students and the HSQ) in a rousing version of Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.”

But that’s not all. To kick the “fun factor” up a notch, we held our first play-along, inviting everyone from the audience to join us either by singing or playing along. Nine instrumentalists joined us, and everyone in the audience broke out into song and dance.

Many thanks to Michelle for her creativity and musical arrangements and to our musical guests Joe Magar, Jeff Jones, and Jameka Morrison for their fantastic music-making.

“Don’t Worry About a Thing” at our Final Performance Party Play-Along !

This year, for the first time, Music Haven is hosting a play-along at our final performance party. Our students and the HSQ will be playing the Bob Marley tune “Three Little Birds,” and you are invited to play along! Parts for violin, cello, and viola are available for download from our website. If you’d like to play along, just bring your instrument to the performance party! You can download a part from our website or pick one up at the event.

The performance party will be held at the Wexler-Grant School, on Friday June 5th at 6 pm. The school is located at 55 Foote Street in New Haven, near Dixwell Avenue. It’s free and open to the public, and will, as always, be followed by a feast. Please come and watch our students show off all they have learned this year! They can’t wait to see you.

Swammy Swans and Brown Barbaloots

What better way to welcome spring than by planting a tree? That was our thought here at Music Haven, and this past Sunday, we celebrated the changing of the seasons and our community with a day full of outdoor activities designed to help us appreciate and enjoy our environment. The day began with a performance at the John C. Daniels School, where the HSQ gave the world premiere of Netta Hadari’s setting of “The Lorax” by Dr. Seuss. With Netta as guest orator, and choice speaking parts for quartet members, the quartet fiddled its way through Seuss’ parable of environmental stewardship. Afterward, we walked to the Arch Street Greenspace, where Evelyn Rodriguez educated our students about the history of the Community Greenspace Program, and we talked about how our students and their families could help build and protect greenspaces in their neighborhoods.

A short bus ride later, we found ourselves at Scantlebury Park near the Wexler-Grant School, where we met up with Jerry Turek and some friends from the Urban Resources Initiative. After some on-the-job training, our students went to work digging a hole for our tree! We were soon ready to plant our dogwood. We finished up the afternoon by eating lunch, playing a few games of kickball, and silk-screening t-shirts with the Music Haven logo. Make sure not to miss out on our next community day; it’s sure to be a blast. Thanks to Jerry, Evelyn, and our friends at the Urban Resources Initiative and the Community Greenspace Program.

Music Haven Horses Around

So far, we’ve talked about Music Haven’s adventures with rappers and ballet dancers. But our most recent artistic collaboration last weekend was a completely different animal! A handful of Music Haven students, families and teachers took time out for a trip to the country, and made friends with a stable of horses. Our equine adventure came courtesy of Eric and Ann Lehman, the horses’ owners, who are also not only Music Haven supporters, but the uncle and grandmother, respectively, of Sarah Perkins, Music Haven’s administrative assistant. We hope that everyone enjoyed the fresh air, and returned to New Haven feeling rejuvenated.

Music Haven Students Collaborate with LEAP

In keeping with the theme of collaboration between different artistic disciplines, Music Haven students got to meet and work with a group of young ballet dancers from the LEAP after-school program! At the LEAP Expo, held on May 13th, we were fortunate enough to be invited as guests of Wendy DeLucca’s class. Tina Lee Hadari and Chris Jenkins, Haven Quartet members, performed a duo by Peter Schickele to warm up the crowd. Next, a group of second-year Music Haven students played French Folk Song while a LEAP counselor performed her own choreography. Afterward, Wendy’s class of young LEAP ballet dancers performed their own routine.

We really enjoyed working with LEAP, and hope to expand on this artistic collaboration next year! Thanks to Wendy DeLucca, Eric Smith, and Erik Clemons, executive director of LEAP, for organizing the event and inviting us to participate.

HSQ Collaborates With Rappers

String quartets are frequently involved in collaborations with other musicians, bringing colleagues on board to perform string sextets, octets, and even the occasional viola quintet. But rarely are they deemed ‘cool’ enough to play with real-life rappers.

The Haven String Quartet had no such problems on May 6th, when we played in the Yale4Peace concert, held in Woolsey Hall, for an audience of local high school students. Sponsored jointly by Yale University and the attorney general’s office of Connecticut, the event was designed to discourage illegal gun ownership and street violence, and featured the rap group 4Peace, whose members include rappers Twice Thou (Antonio Ennis) and Edo.G (Edward Anderson.) Both rappers created 10 backbeats to which high school students were encouraged to write their own lyrics, touching on some issue of social justice, for submission; the best rap lyrics were performed at the concert.

Professor Thomas Duffy, Director of Bands at Yale University and Music Haven Board member, conducted a small ensemble consisting of winds, brass, choir, and the HSQ. Most impressively, he pulled off his own rap with great flair and lyrical dexterity! Thanks so much to Professor Duffy for inviting us to participate in the project, and thanks to Twice Thou and Edo.G for promoting awareness of an issue so relevant to the safety and well-being of our youth.