Thinking "Quartet"

The first 30 pages of a book recommended to me by James Berrera are history. The book, The Art of Quartet Playing: The Guarneri Quartet. Readers should note this book highlights the wisdom and musical genius of the Guarneri STRING Quartet. What we as Sax Quartets can learn from this book is that instruments aside, great ensembles are first and foremost great MUSICAL ensembles. So a book such as this can be an amazingly powerful tool, much like best selling books on Leadership can help Leaders from a variety of organizations. As a side note, the quartet after 45 years will be retiring. Check out this link to learn more.

It may have been the environment when I was reading the book (I was listening to the WSO Symphony rehearsal in preparation to play the American in Paris), but the first 30 pages spoke to many of the questions I have had regarding how our quartet can establish great rehearsal habits. So, over the next few posts, I will be highlighting the thinking, tips, hints, methods and practices outlined in the book. I should first say nothing replaces reading the book. The book is jammed full of advice. In fact, the conversation around the first 30 pages easily filled the 45 minute ride home for my wife and I after the Symphony rehearsal. So, the posts will be high level take aways that may entice you to read the book for yourself.

A key takeaway from the first 30 was a great conversation regarding quartet leadership. The quartet believes in a shared leadership model, ie - not uber leader. Leadership is defined as the ability to inspire others to join in on a mission, to inspire others to WANT to follow, support and push towards a common, attainable goal. Notice that leadership does not have as part of the definition a statement such as "following 1", or "Obeying the commands of an individual." Leaders are among us each day, we all can and should be leaders. But leaders come in levels. My role in our quartet for example is to do what I am doing here. I hope my words inspire our own group to think hard about how we work together and how we can better ourselves. So, for this effort, I do consider myself a leader. But as we start to rehearse, new leaders will and should take on their roles. As the book states, a group with a single leader will musically take on the desires of that one individual and only that one. In this case, the group will become followers and not participants. I think we would all agree, this is not the intent of any great musical ensemble.

The approach of "Leaders in All" can be a very personal issue for groups. I know in talking about this with my wife, the philosophy is not one that traditional musicians grow up with. Many of us come from backgrounds where the "Director' or "Conductor" model is applied to all we do musically. I would go so far as to say we are ingrained by the Authoritarian model of musical leadership to expect 1 person to surface and lead us to greatness. The advice from the book clearly points the advantages of thinking past those constraints and building group leadership in each performer.

One idea mentioned in the group to build a groups application of "Leaders in All" is to have each member take a tune or movement of a tune and work to build their own leadership skills. Through this effort, the members will start to experiment with what they can empower the group to perform -- ie -- how can they express, both verbally and non-verbally what they feel the group should do?

I feel like I could write forever on this topic in order to really flesh out the details. But, this is a blog and blogs are meant for idea sharing and conversation. The main point I will leave is for groups to be great -- they must build "Leaders in All" for themselves.

This is post one from what I am sure will be a great book. It will take me time to read this book as my life is pretty full of research, business, and teaching right now. So, stay tuned. Or, grab a copy yourself and join in.