The members of Solera Quartet don’t play together every day. In fact, following the group’s performances this week at Williamsburg Winery, they’ll spend nearly two months apart.
When they do reunite, though, something special happens.
“We have a really wonderful internal chemistry in the group,” member Miki-Sophia Cloud said.
The Solera Quartet, composed of violist Molly Carr, cellist Andrew Janss, violinists Tricia Park and Cloud, will perform in two Williamsburg Coffee Concerts at the Winery, June 23 and 24. Presented by the Virginia Arts Festival, the concerts allows audiences the chance to mingle with artists following performances, coffee and pastries included.
Formed about a year ago, the quartet is currently Quartet in Residence at the University of Notre Dame. Individually, as accomplished, vibrant musicians, members stay busy. And they’re part of a growing movement of artist entrepreneurs.
“I think the old model is a little bit more like you wait until somebody hires you,” Cloud said. Whereas in recent years, “there’s been a lot more of a movement toward musicians taking ownership and taking ownership of their own projects.”
Cloud herself plays with A Far Cry, a Grammy-nominated, self-conducted chamber orchestra, as well as a functioning nonprofit run entirely by the musicians. Park is artistic director of MusicIC, a chamber music festival merging music and literature. Janss works with the Omega Ensemble, a chamber music series supporting upcoming musicians, while Carr founded Project: Music Heals Us, a series of chamber and outreach concerts.
Together, the richness of individual experiences multiplies.
“We go off, and we’re inspired, and we learn things from our other colleagues, and then we bring them back to the quartet,” Cloud said. “The quartet inspires our other work, so it’s very symbiotic.”
Thursday’s program features “Entr’acte,” by Caroline Shaw, a Pulitzer Prize-winning contemporary composer. The quartet will also perform the last quartet Beethoven ever wrote, Cloud said, and the first Mendelssohn wrote.
“They’re really passionate works. They’re exciting works. They’re really substantial,” she said.
And, interestingly, they’re connected both musically – Mendelssohn drew inspiration from Beethoven’s late quartets, Cloud said – and thematically.
“They’re both really about asking questions from a human perspective,” Cloud said, “and trying to answer them, in some way, through music.”
On Friday, the group will play Dvorak’s “American” String Quartet. The program also includes appearances from Virginia Symphony Orchestra flutist Debra Wendells Cross and harpist Barbara Chapman
“They’re pieces that we love so deeply,” Cloud said, “and we’re just so excited to share them with the audience in Virginia.”
Bridges can be reached by phone at 757-345-2342.
Williamsburg Coffee Concerts
When: 10:30 a.m., June 23 and 24
Where: Williamsburg Winery, 5800 Wessex Hundred
Tickets: $15-$20
Available online at vafest.org, by phone at 282-2822 or in person at the Williamsburg Municipal Building (Finance Dept.), 401 Lafayette St., open 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Monday-Friday.
