If you want to hear the St. Lawrence String Quartet, you've got to see them. Just ask senior Hanife Esengil, who walked into the lounge in Kimball Hall in October to find Stanford's resident ensemble halfway through R. Murray Schafer's Quartet No. 3. "You wouldn't get the effect just listening to them on tape. You have to see how they surprise the audience with those movements," she says of the ensemble, known for its midperformance stomping, yelling and swaying.
Since they arrived on campus in the fall of 1998, the quartet -- first violinist (and leader) Geoff Nuttall, second violinist Barry Shiffman, violist Lesley Robertson and cellist Marina Hoover -- has been startling audiences in dorm lounges and concert halls. They work out of the music department, giving private lessons to students, leading master classes and traveling on an increasingly busy concert schedule. They've returned for a dozen dorm concerts. "The energy of 85 young people is just an incredible lifting of the spirit," says Shiffman, who, like the rest of the quartet, hails from Eastern Canada, where the group formed in 1989.
They spent most of the 1990s headquartered in New York and racking up glowing reviews around the world. The New York Times called them "viscerally and intellectually gripping." Last May, they released their first cd, a recording of Schumann String Quartets Nos. 1 and 3. Associate professor of music Jonathan Berger, who helped recruit the quartet, says they made the move to Stanford "because they felt that being grounded in an academic environment and striking the right balance between traveling and teaching would keep their performances fresh and their energy level high."
That energy, which fuels their unorthodox performance style, has baffled -- even offended -- a few of the more traditional members of the Bay Area audience. They'll just have to adjust, says Shiffman. "Some members of the audience expect [music] to be treated like soothing wallpaper," he says. "But in a Beethoven quartet, there is a life-and-death struggle going on."
