Sophie Tung ’25 shares her talent on the violin.
Each Spring Term, student-musicians have the opportunity to join the Chamber Music Performance Seminar class, also known as MUS910. Offering a unique class environment, students are provided the space and time to work in chamber groups and immerse themselves in chamber music repertoire. Coached by Mrs. Barnes, MUS910 students enjoy frequent opportunities to practice, polish, and perform.
As the overseer of the class, Barnes organizes students into groups, chooses the repertoire, and coaches rehearsals. She views MUS910 as a chance for passionate musicians to spend an abundance of time in chamber groups and push a piece much further than they would be able to in a typical chamber setting.
“It gives me a chance to work with the kids more frequently. [When] you play chamber music, an hour goes by really quickly and just imagine if you met three times a week. The experience is [that] you can just polish the piece much more, it just gives you a lot more time to learn it more deeply and I really enjoy that part of teaching,” said Mrs. Barnes.
With a diverse lineup of instruments and players, the program splits students up into multiple groups, each playing pieces from different time periods and of different styles. Bruce Ru ’28, a violinist, described his two groups for the term, commenting on his excitement for the challenge regarding the difficulty of the pieces.
“One thing that we’re working on is a Dvorak Piano Quintet, and we separate into two groups of five, so each of us does a movement. We’re looking at the very iconic first movement, while the other group is taking a stab at the extremely difficult Scherzo Furiant movement, which is very interesting. The other thing that we’re doing is Tchaikovsky’s ‘Souvenir de Florence,’ the piece for a sextet, but since we have eight string players, we get some people to double it. It’s going to be very, very challenging, but it’ll be very fun,” said Ru.
For violinist Melody Oh ’27, Andover was her first introduction to chamber music. Through taking MUS910, she hopes to grow as a player and heavily immerse herself in chamber music.
“The primary reason I joined this class [was] because I wanted to get more involved with chamber music. I really didn’t get a chance to involve myself in extensive chamber music until I came to Andover. And after taking a year and a half of Andover’s chamber program, I wanted to try taking it as a class. So I waited until the Spring Term, and with the spring weather, I felt like playing more music,” said Oh.
Rather than being just another graded class, for Ru, MUS910 is an opportunity to refine his craft to perfection. Motivated by his desire to captivate audiences with his performance, he shared his enthusiasm for the term.
“I’m looking forward to being really able to thoroughly polish something. We’re working on those two movements, and we’re very determined. I mean, of course, this is a graded class, but that’s not the only factor. We really want to get this done, put this together, and make the audience go bonkers,” said Ru.
