Maia Quartet

1990-2011

The Maia Quartet was formed at the Cleveland Institute of Music in 1990. Its charter mmbers were Amy Kuhlmann, violin, Tim Shiu, violin, Elizabeth Oakes, viola and Ken Law, cellist. They were the first group selected by the Cleveland Institute of Music's Apprenticeship Quartet Program. As participants they studied extensively with the Cavani String Quartet and worked with the Tokyo, American, Cleveland and Emerson string quartets. Their mission was to reach audiences of all ages. In collaboration with Young Audiences Inc, the group developed numerous innovative educational programs about chamber music. The quartet was recipient of the Friedberg Chamber Music Fellowship in residence at the Peabody Conservatory. The quatet was then selected as the resident graduate quartet at the Julliard School of Music working closely with the Juilliard Quartet and served as their teaching assistants. They spent two years with Juilliared before retuning to Peabody to study and teach. Summer fellowship include Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and the Aspen Center for Advanced Quartet Studies.

The quartet played concerts at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center and for the Music the Great Hall series in Baltimore and at the Terrace Theatre at the Kennedy Center and as visiting artists at Harris Hall of the Aspe Music Festival. They collaborated with flutist Samuel Baron and violist Michael Tree of the Guarneri Quartet. In 1998, the quartet was also chosen as the Quartet-in-Residence with the Acadiana Syphony Orchestra of Lafayette, LA, serving as principal string players in the orchestra.

In 1996, Amos Yang replaced Ken Law as cellist in the quartet.

In 1998 the quartet was selected as Quartet In Residence at the University of Iowa School of Music.

April 2002, Amos Chang leaves the Maia Quartet for Seattle Symphony.

September 2002 Hannah Holman replaces cellist Amos Yang . Yang accepted a position with the Seattle Symphony.

2003 Margaret Soper joins quartet as violinist.

Maia String Quartet comes to UMHB Sep 10, 2009 BELTON - The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor music department launches its sixth season of the Hillman Visiting Artists with the Maia String Quartet performing Works of Immortal Masters at 7:30 tonight in UMHB's Hughes Recital Hall. The quartet will perform alongside pianist and UMHB artist-in-residence Michelle Schumann. The program explores the nascent chamber works of three master composers: Ludwig van Beethoven, Felix Mendelssohn and Erno Dohnanyi. The pieces transport listeners to a time when these colossal figures were just beginning to find their compositional voices.

Since its formation in 1990, the Maia Quartet, quartet-in-residence at the University of Iowa, has established itself nationally as an ensemble of innovation and versatility. Praised by critics for its sparkling musical intelligence, the quartet has appeared in major concert halls throughout the U.S. and abroad, including New York's Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall and the 92nd Street Y, Washington D.C.'s Kennedy Center, Beijing's Forbidden City Concert Hall and the Aspen Music Festival's Harris Hall. They have collaborated with renowned soloists, chamber ensembles and symphony orchestras. Their dedication to educational outreach has led to work with the Starling Foundation, Young Audiences, Inc. and the Midori Foundation. The Maia Quartet formed at the Cleveland Institute of Music and subsequently received a fellowship to attend the Peabody Conservatory and work with Earl Carlyss. They were the recipients of the Arnhold String Quartet Fellowship at the Juilliard School, where they worked with the world-acclaimed Juilliard String Quartet and served as teaching assistants. They have held summer fellowships at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and at the Aspen Center for Advanced Quartet Studies, where they worked with the American, Cleveland, Emerson, and Tokyo String Quartets. This concert is made possible through the generous support of the Helen Frances Hillman Fund for Scholarly Exchange. The Helen Frances Hillman Fund underwrites the Hillman Visiting Artist Recital Series for Scholarly Exchange. Jimmye S. Hillman established the fund in 1999 in honor of his wife, Helen Frances Smith Hillman, UMHB class of 1946. The fund was designed to foster scholarly exchange at UMHB, particularly in the area of fine arts, music and languages. For more information please call the College of Visual and Performing Arts at 254-295-4678.

CLASSIC ARTS NEWS Maia Quartet Names New Violinist BY BEN MATTISON APR 18, 2005 The Maia Quartet has chosen Tricia Park to fill its vacant first violinist position, the University of Iowa announced. The quartet, which was formed in 1990 at the Cleveland Institute of Music, is in residence at the UI School of Music. Park replaces founding first violinist Amy Appold, who left the group last fall to teach at the University of Missouri. Park was selected through an unusually public search process, in which two finalists visited the university to teach, rehearse, and perform. Trained at the Juilliard School, Park won the Avery Fisher Career Grant. She has performed as a soloist with the Baltimore Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Montreal Symphony, and other groups. The other members of the Maia Quartet are founding violist Elizabeth Oakes, cellist Hannah Holman, and violinist Margaret Soper Gutierrez.

Elizabeth Oakes, violist, is an active chamber musician, teacher and performer.  For twenty-two years, Ms. Oakes served as the violist of the Maia Quartet and performed throughout the United States, Asia, Canada, and Europe, concertizing in major venues including Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall, the 92nd Street Y and the Kennedy Center. Her collaborations with other artists include Maia Quartet performances with Daniel Avshalomov, Joel Krosnick, Helen Callus, Andre Michel Schub and Robert Kapilow. Ms. Oakes has taught at numerous summer festivals including the Interlochen Advanced String Quartet Program, The Great Wall International Music Academy in Beijing, and the Rocky Mountain Summer Conservatory in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

Ms. Oakes's musical and interdisciplinary interests have led her to develop many large-scale projects. With two colleagues, Ms. Oakes founded and served as an artistic director for the Foothills Music Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina for nine years. As member of the Maia Quartet, she coordinated several large events, including Scandinavian/NordicFest – a month-long U. of I. festival of chamber music tied to film, theater, dance and lectures.  In her current position as Director of the University of Iowa String Quartet Residency Program. Ms. Oakes brings in nationally and internationally-recognized quartets to campus for week-long residencies.  These residencies reach across disciplines and impact the broader U. of I. campus as well as the larger state of Iowa. She has been the recipient of numerous grants from major granting organizations such as Chamber Music America, the Iowa Arts Council, Humanities Iowa and the John and Anna Hanes Foundation.  Ms. Oakes is an Associate Professor of Instruction at the University of Iowa and her current areas of research are focused on racial equity in classical music specifically and higher education more broadly.

 

 

The Maia Quartet 
(Amy Kuhlmann Appold and Timothy Shiu, violin; Elizabeth Oakes, viola; and Amos Yang, cello) has established itself nationally as an ensemble of great innovation and versatility since its formation in 1990. The quartet has appeared in major concert halls throughout the U.S., including New York’s Alice Tully Hall, Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center Terrace Theatre, and the Aspen Music Festival’s Harris Hall. Collaborations with leading chamber musicians of our time have included performances with violist Michael Tree of the Guarneri Quartet, pianist Ann Schein, and the late flutist Samuel Baron. Committed to the work of living composers, they have given world premieres of compositions by Pierre Jalbert, Donald Grantham, Jeffrey Mumford, and Ingram Marshall (recorded on the New Albion label). They have served as associate faculty at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, Maryland and as the resident quartet with the Acadiana Symphony Orchestra in Lafayette, Louisiana. They are currently the faculty quartet-in-residence at the University of Iowa. The Maia Quartet was formed at the Cleveland Institute of Music and subsequently received a fellowship to attend the Peabody Conservatory and work with Earl Carlyss. They were awarded the Arnhold String Quartet Fellowship at the Juilliard School, where they studied with the world-acclaimed Juilliard Quartet. In addition, they have held summer fellowships at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and at the Aspen Center for Advanced Quartet Studies, where they worked with the Tokyo, Emerson, Cleveland, and American string quartets.

Review from Washington Post:

MAIA QUARTET

By Mark Carrington
October 16, 1995

Is it possible to overinform a musical phrase? With all the swooning, pushing and pulling the Maia Quartet did in the first movement of Mozart's Quartet in G, K. 387, the answer would have to be a decided yes. On balance, this jaunty Allegro with its elegantly counterbalanced themes didn't so much wilt under the Maia Quartet's intense scrutiny as become an overly evolved mutation of itself, rather like light filaments of sound tortured into a bothersome buzzing of bees.

Elsewhere during the quartet's second appearance at Strathmore Hall on Thursday night, the ensemble's intensity worked on the music's behalf. Mozart may have written Andante Cantabiles with more affecting melodies, but few match the proportions of that in K. 387. Full marks to cellist Kenneth Law and violist Elizabeth Oakes for setting the stage so sweetly, and kudos to all for unerring musical judgment in the Molto Allegro.

To Joan Tower's "Night Fields," with its brief episodes and flurrying activity, the ensemble brought its best efforts. Though barely 16 minutes long, the work could have been shorter simply because the end outstayed its welcome. Perhaps Tower wasn't sure how to bring it all to a close -- or maybe she felt that if she kept hacking away at the same old stump of an idea she might make some sense of it.

Hearing the Maia play the Debussy G Minor Quartet made one wonder why this music wasn't selected as the soundtrack for the movie "Brief Encounter" instead of all that Rachmaninoff rot. It has that "darling I love you but we can't meet again" drama about it without the sappiness. The Maia's playing was as touching as the movie was innocent.

Elizabeth Oakes Link http://www.elizabeth-oakes.com/index.html



 

 

Maia Quartet Gallery

Maia Quartet, Oakes Home 1992 or 1993
Ken Law, Amy Kuhlmann, Beth Oakes, Tim Shiu. Concert Poster at Alice Tully Hall, Juilliard, April 20, 1996
Pat Oakes, Concert Poster at Alice Tully Hall, Juilliard, April 20, 1996
4/10/1995.  Beth Oakes' debut in New York City.  Nancy drove down on Monday after a half day of work and then drove back to Cortland on Tuesday morning.  Family members with the Maia Quartet:

 

 

Maia Quartet and their parents: Herman J. and Marilyn Kuhlmann, Amy Kuhlmann (Appold), Tim Shiu, Ruth Shiu,

Lemuel Shiu, ?, Louise Law Sr, Kenneth Ray Law Sr.. Beth Law, Ken Law Jr.. Pat Oakes, Beth Oakes, Mel Oakes

Maia Quartet and their parents: Herman J. and Marilyn Kuhlmann, Amy Kuhlmann (Appold), Tim Shiu, Ruth Shiu,

Lemuel Shiu, ?, Louise Law Sr, Kenneth Ray Law Sr.. Beth Law, Ken Law Jr.. Pat Oakes, Beth Oakes, Mel Oake

Maia Quartet and their families: Names of those in picture: Herman J. and Marilyn Kuhlmann, Amy Kuhlmann (Appold), Tim Shiu, Ruth Shiu, Lemuel Shiu, ?, Louise Law Sr, Kenneth Ray Law Sr.. Beth Law, Ken Law Jr.. Pat Oakes, Beth Oakes, Mel Oakes, Pat Oakes, Mel Oakes, Bob and Lois Winter, Mardie Oakes, Nancy Hatch, Kelly Winter, Rachel Matthews

Tim Shiu, Beth Oakes, Amy Kuhlmann, Ken Law, composer Pierre Jalbert. Maia premier piece by Jalbert at Alice Tully Hall, 1996
Maia Quartet Ken Law, Amy Kuhlmann, Ken Law and Beth Oakes, Alice Tully Halll Concert, 1995
Beth Oakes chatting with composer Joan Tower. Pat Oakes in bafkground. Alice Tully Hall, 1995.
Maia Quartet, Faculty String Quartet in Residence , Elizabeth Oakes, Zoran Jakovic, Hannah Holman, Trisha Park
Chamber Music magazine, Vol. 28. No. 4, page 2.
Maia Quartet,
Hannah Holman, Elizabeth Oakes, Trisha Park, Zoran Jakovic
Maia Quartet
Illumine, Vol. 3, No. 1, March 2000. p. 3
The University of Iowa
Maia Quartet
Illumine, Vol. 3, No. 1, March 2000. p. 4
The University of Iowa
Maia Quartet
Illumine, Vol. 3, No. 1, March 2000. p. 5
The University of Iowa
1997 Maia Quartet, Front to Back: Amy Kuhlmann, Timothy Shiu, Amos Yang, Elizabeth Oakes
Maia Quartet, 1997
Maia Quartet Review 1997, Austin, TX
Maia Quartet Review 1997, Austin, TX
Maia Quartet Benefit for Austin Waldorf School
Maia Quartet Benefit for Austtin Waldorf School
Maia Quartet Benefit for Austtin Waldorf School
Beth Oakes, Maia Quartet, Democracy Project
Maia Quartet, Weber School, Iowa City, Iowa
University of Texas String Project, Beth and her sister attended Saturday morning for two hours., From Texas Highways Magazine, 8/1981
Beth Oakes and viola.
Concert at Dougherty Arts Center, Austin, TX,
Concert in Austin, Texas.
Amy, Beth, Tim and Amos, Dougherty Center, Austin, Texas.
Beth Oakes, Daugherty Center, Austin, TX
Amos, Beth and Tim, Dougherty Center, Austin, TX
Amos Yang, Amy Kuhlmann, Felicity Coltman, Beth Oakes, Tim Shiu. Austin Chamber Center, Austin, TX, 1990s
Tim Shiu, Amy Kuhlmann, Beth Oakes, Ken Law at Mel and Pat Oakes' home, Dec. 6, 1992.
Amy Kuhlmann, Tim Shiu, Ken Law and Beth Oakes, July 25, 1992
Jessamy Brown, Mardie Oakes, Sarah Oakes, Beth Oakes, Amy Kuhlmann, Tim Shiu, Pat Oakes, Ken Law and Mel Oakes, Oakes Home in Austin, Texas. Dec 6, 1992
Jessamy Brown, Mardie Oakes, Sarah Oakes, Beth Oakes, Amy Kuhlmann, Tim Shiu, Pat Oakes, Ken Law and Mel Oakes, Oakes Home in Austin, Texas. Dec 6, 1992
Maia Quartet, 1996. Elizabeth Oakes, Ken Law, Amy Kuhlmann, Tim Shiu
Maia Quartet, 1996. Elizabeth Oakes, Ken Law, Amy Kuhlmann, Tim Shiu
Maia Quartet, 1996. Elizabeth Oakes, Ken Law, Amy Kuhlmann, Tim Shiu