by Mike Telin
Is there a better way to spend a summer evening than enjoying refreshments while listening to a world-class string quartet in the elaborate ballroom of a historic Georgian Revival house?
On Thursday, August 4 at 7:30 pm, Tuesday Musical invites you to a “Summer Soirée” featuring the Escher String Quartet at the Byron R. Barder House on West Market Street in Akron. Hosted by Braun & Steidl Architects, the event marks the inauguration of the Escher String Quartet as Tuesday Musical’s first Quartet-in-Residence.
The multi-year residency will include performances by the Escher on Tuesday Musical’s mainstage concert seasons, as well as programs at The University of Akron School of Music, Baldwin Wallace Conservatory, and others educational and community venues. [Read more…]
On Wednesday evening, September 30, Tuesday Musical kicked off its 2015-2016 concert series with the Escher String Quartet (violinists Adam Barnett-Hart and Aaron Boyd, violist Pierre Lapointe and cellist Brook Speltz). The New York-based ensemble delivered warm, passionate performances of music by Franz Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn, and Alexander Zemlinsky in the E.J. Thomas Performing Arts Hall on the campus of The University of Akron. 
Ever since Haydn established the string quartet as the ensemble de rigueur, chamber music for strings has tended to operate in base four. There are many variants on the quartet (“4 ± n”, as a math teacher might write it), but even when you subtract a violin (Beethoven) or add a viola (Mozart), a cello (Schubert), or a double bass (Dvořák) — or, as in this concert, when you pump it up to a sextet (Brahms) or an octet (Mendelssohn, Shostakovich) — the quartet remains the norm. 
The Piano Trio With No Name (pianist Wu Han, violinist Philip Setzer, and cellist David Finckel) launched their most recent touring project — eventually to include all six of the Beethoven trios — with a brilliant performance on the Tuesday Musical Series at E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron on March 31. They’ll be back next season to finish the job. 
It’s not every day that a performer can be judged to be one of the two or three best in the world. Tenor Lawrence Brownlee could make that claim, but he probably wouldn’t, at least not publicly. Brownlee, a native of Youngstown, Ohio, a Steelers and Ohio State football fan, and an aficionado of good food, is a down-to-earth guy who happens to be one of the leading current examples of that rare species, the bel canto tenor.