Mobile audiences will get a rare chance to hear a piano quartet made up of faculty musicians from four different universities when the newly formed Tri-State Piano Quartet performs at the University of South Alabama. The ensemble’s name describes its reach: four players, four institutions and three states, converging on one stage in Mobile.
The quartet brings together USA piano professor Robert Holm, University of Alabama violin professor Jenny Gregoire, University of Illinois viola professor Rudolf Haken and University of Southern Mississippi cello professor Alexander Russakovsky. Each is a working faculty artist — a musician who teaches, performs and records at a major institution — and the quartet gathers them across state lines for a collaboration that few chamber groups attempt.
Though each musician teaches and performs at a different institution across the region, the four regularly collaborate on chamber music projects, and their Mobile appearance marks a homecoming of sorts for the group’s Gulf Coast connections through USA’s music program. For Mobile audiences, the concert offers something the region rarely hosts: a full piano quartet — piano, violin, viola and cello — performed by conservatory-caliber players on a hometown stage.
Piano quartets occupy a distinctive corner of the chamber repertoire. The combination balances the sustaining power of the piano against three string voices, and it demands the same intimate ensemble skills as a string quartet while adding the logistical complexity of a keyboard partner. Repertoire for the combination is smaller than for string quartets, which makes a program of two major piano quartets — as this concert offers — a substantial statement from a new ensemble.
Opening with Martinu
The program opens with Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu’s First Piano Quartet, a three-movement work that reflects the composer’s early exposure to American musical idioms shortly after he emigrated to the United States in 1941. The piece is known for blending European classical structure with the rhythms and energy Martinu encountered in his new surroundings.
Martinu’s arrival in America was itself a story of disruption and reinvention. Fleeing Europe during the Second World War, the composer landed in the United States and found his music transformed by the sounds of his new country — jazz-influenced rhythms, the energy of American orchestral playing and a directness of expression that shaped much of his American-period work. The First Piano Quartet sits in that creative moment, a European craftsman’s structure animated by American motion, and it rewards listeners who enjoy hearing two musical worlds meet inside a single piece.
For the quartet performing it, the work also serves as a statement of intent. Opening a debut program with Martinu — rather than with the more familiar Austro-German repertoire — signals an ensemble interested in music that is played less often, and it gives each player a chance to show the ensemble’s rhythmic bite as much as its blend.
After intermission, the quartet will perform Johannes Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 2 in A major, Op. 26. The sprawling four-movement work steadily builds in intensity and closes with a spirited “Hungarian Dance” finale, a passage long admired by chamber music audiences for its energy and technical demands.
The Brahms is one of the monuments of the piano quartet literature. Its long melodic arcs, dense piano writing and ambitious scale make it a test of stamina and coordination for any ensemble, and its finale draws on the Hungarian dance idiom that fascinated Brahms throughout his career — folk-flavored, propulsive music that sends audiences out of the hall on a rising wave. Pairing it with the Martinu gives the program a satisfying arc: one work about arriving in America, and one by a composer whose own energies carried Romantic music toward the twentieth century.
Tickets and details
Tickets are $8 for the general public and $5 for USA students, faculty, staff, seniors and youth under 18. Organizers note there will be no advance ticket sales, and admission at the door will be cash or check only — a reminder for concertgoers to plan accordingly rather than arriving without the right payment.
The door-only arrangement is worth noting for anyone planning to attend. Without advance sales, seats are first come, first served, and popular faculty concerts can fill quickly; arriving early is the surest way to guarantee a place. The cash-or-check policy likewise calls for a moment of preparation — there will be no card reader at the door — but it also keeps ticketing simple and keeps every dollar of admission with the program rather than in processing fees.
The modest ticket price reflects the concert’s setting within a university music program, where faculty recitals and guest collaborations are typically priced to fill the hall rather than to turn a profit. For the cost of a movie ticket, listeners get an hour and a half of major chamber music performed by four professors whose day jobs are training the next generation of musicians.
The performance offers local classical music fans an opportunity to hear touring-caliber chamber musicians in an intimate setting without having to travel outside the region. Chamber music at this level usually requires a trip to New Orleans, Pensacola or beyond; the quartet’s appearance brings that experience to USA’s campus, where the acoustics and seating put listeners close enough to watch the ensemble work through eye contact and breath — the invisible coordination that makes chamber music chamber music.
For the four professors, the concert is also a working demonstration of what they teach. Faculty ensembles give students a model of professional collaboration: how musicians rehearse when rehearsal time is scarce, how they divide interpretive decisions, and how they maintain individual careers while honoring the demands of a group. Students in USA’s program will be able to watch their own professor — Holm, at the piano — lead a group of peers through two demanding works.
The regional makeup of the quartet is itself part of the story. Tuscaloosa, Champaign, Hattiesburg and Mobile are hundreds of miles apart, and assembling the group for rehearsal requires the kind of scheduling creativity that university faculty artists know well — summers, breaks and cleverly planned road trips. The group’s formation speaks to a network of Gulf South and Midwest music programs whose faculties routinely collaborate, sharing stages across state lines in combinations that official concert seasons rarely produce.
For more information about the concert, call 251-460-7116. The phone line connects callers with USA’s music department, where staff can answer questions about the program, parking and the door-only ticketing arrangement. With two major works, four faculty artists and a ticket price designed to fill every seat, the Tri-State Piano Quartet’s Mobile debut offers the kind of evening local chamber music audiences usually have to leave town to find.
Chamber music audiences in Mobile know how uncommon evenings like this are. Touring chamber ensembles pass through the region occasionally, and the city’s presenters bring in string quartets and soloists, but a piano quartet of four university professors — assembled specifically for the repertoire’s two great works — is a one-night proposition. The concert’s format, with no advance sales and door-only admission, adds to the informal, come-when-you-can character of a faculty collaboration rather than a formally promoted tour stop.
The pairing of the two works also makes the evening educational in the best sense. The Martinu is an introduction for most listeners — a chance to hear a twentieth-century composer’s American inflections — while the Brahms is a returning favorite, the kind of piece audiences greet like an old friend. Hearing them back to back lets listeners trace how the piano quartet, a form perfected in the Romantic era, absorbed the changes of the century that followed.
Each member of the quartet arrives with a performer’s pedigree that fits the program’s demands. The Brahms in particular asks for a pianist comfortable carrying dense, orchestral-scale writing, string players capable of long, singing lines, and an ensemble willing to commit to a 40-minute work without a net. Faculty artists who perform this repertoire regularly bring exactly that combination, and the quartet’s formation suggests the four players found in one another the colleagues they needed to take on the repertoire seriously.
The concert also underscores USA’s role in the region’s musical life. University music programs along the Gulf Coast serve double duty — training students and presenting professional performances that local audiences would otherwise have to travel to hear. Faculty recitals like this one keep that mission visible, and they give students and community members alike a reason to be on campus for an evening of music that is, by any measure, professional grade.
With the program set, the logistics are simple: arrive with cash or check, choose a seat, and hear a rare combination of instruments and players in person. For chamber music fans between New Orleans and Pensacola, the Tri-State Piano Quartet’s appearance is the kind of date that goes on the calendar early — and the kind of ensemble that, if the evening goes well, audiences will hope returns.