Texans In Tune is a segment of Marfa Public Radio’s Monday classical music program In Tune, featuring live performances with students at the University of Texas Butler School of Music.
In this segment — which originally aired on Monday, April 6th — host Nick Hurt speaks with the Thalea String Quartet. Hurt and members Christopher Whitley, Kumiko Sakamoto, Luis Bellorín, and Titilayo Ayangade discuss teaching young ensembles to listen, the importance of diversity in programming, and how they strive to be a “string quartet for the future.”
For this show, the quartet plays the works of Aaron Copland and Florence Price. They were recorded live at the Butler School of Music.
Speaking on audience engagement Sakamoto says, “we like to do what we can to break down the barrier between the audience and the performer. We used to play lots of house concerts, and that informed how we perform now. So now, even if we are playing in a really large hall and we are really far away from the audience, we do our best to get as close to them as possible, not just physically, but with our music and emotionally express how we are feeling about something musically.”