Carpe Diem String Quartet

“EXPLANTION The Form 990 is prepared by an outside accounting firm, reviewed by the Treasurer and distributed to the full board of directors prior to filing.”

“EXPLANATION The organization makes its governing documents and financial statements available to the public upon request.”

“EXPLANATION Trustee members Jean Wu and I-Cheng Huang are a married couple.”

“Carpe Diem String Quartets core mission is to redefine the chamber music experience, forge a new identity for chamber music, and bring musical access to the widest audience possible, regardless of means and circumstance. The Carpe Diem String Quartet is dedicated to achieving the highest level of performance by championing music of living composers with a balance of the classics and uncovering overlooked treasures of the chamber music repertoire. Carpe Diem is committed to musical education, integration with other art forms, and developing future lifelong music lovers. In addition to the classics, Carpe Diem performs contemporary music, popular music, their own original compositions, and also commissions new works, thereby augmenting the string quartet repertoire. By performing programs designed to appeal to audiences of all ages, means, and circumstances and establishing classical musics relevance to their lives, Carpe Diem creates new audiences inside and outside of the concert hall and revitalizes the chamber music experience.”

“Carpe Diem String Quartet is extensively committed to community engagement and musical education. The quartet continued to provide concerts in K-12 school settings in Ohio school districts and on tour throughout the United States, to music students and non-music students alike, supplementing existing music programs and bringing music into schools where no program currently exists. The audiences for all of these engagement programs, while vastly different, have one element in common a need for non-traditional programs and musical programming that falls outside the normal classical repertoire. Carpe Diem adjusted and altered programming to custom fit these widely varied demographics to suit each audience. Altering the programs and musical choices both gives the group greater leverage in attracting younger and broader audiences and makes the group relevant to people who may have had no prior experience with classical music or stringed instruments. Through Carpe Diems innovative program eStage, made possible by a PNC ArtsAlive grant, the quartet visited 23 Ohio classrooms and home-school groups between 1 July 2013 and 30 June 2014. Audience sizes ranged from 20 students in a school library, home school groups of 30-40 students in community centers and churches, to 2,500 students in a high school gymnasium. Each proograms on-site audience was augmented by an online audience watching and commenting in real time through a variety of social media channels. Logins and comments came from classrooms, cell phones, tablets, desktop and laptop computers from widely diverse geographic areas spanning across North America, Europe, Northern Africa and Asia. With music education slowly being phased out of many schools in Ohio and nationwide, many school-aged students have had little or no access to live musical performances, let alone musical education, except when Carpe Diem String Quartet visited. One memory that is particularly strong was performing Bartok String Quartet no.5 in front of 2500 high school students in Greenville, OH and getting them to clap, stomp and be involved right along with the quartet. Many are of the opinion that Bartok is one of the least accessible composers in the Classical repertoire, and yet the quartets experience seems to directly contradict this. With Carpe Diems interactive and multidimensional approach, the music was readily unlocked. Teachers and home-schooling families are always looking for ways to use learning tools and present materials in new, creative and fresh ways. eStage provided to be a natural and highly effective tool for these teachers and parents. From geography to math, movement to history, Carpe Diem was able to work alongside the curriculum and view these areas through the lens of music. Whether it was getting a library full of 3rd graders to clap along with a complicated rhythm in subdivisions of seven, getting a room of awkward middle schoolers to dance the waltz, or winning over a gymnasium filled to capacity with high school students, Carpe Diems eStage program was able to enter the classroom world and bring music in, not as something extra but as a companion, something that greatly inspired and aided in the learning process. It is Carpe Diems goal to be able to reach rural and economically disadvantaged areas in Ohio via the live-streamed events. Schools and communities who otherwise would not have had the opportunity to attend a live musical performance and interact with the musicians of Carpe Diem were able to enrich their educational experience with music without financial or geographical barriers. Due to the collaborative nature of many of the Quartets eStage programs, Carpe Diem was able to strengthen ties with longtime artistic partner Columbus Dance Theatre, as well as build upon new artistic relationships with Celtic flautist/singer Shannon Heaton and rock singer/songwriter/guitarist Andrew Lipke. The wide variety of music represented during the initial year of eStage was greatly”

“CONTINUED Carpe Diem continued their popular Columbus-based series Seize the Music, exploring multiple musical genres as well as presenting the standard quartet repertoire. Hosted by the Harrison Park Community Center, Carpe Diem retained a neighborhood presence and identity as part of their regular performance season. In an effort to make these programs more accessible to the student population, Carpe Diem continued their voucher program with Columbus State Community College allowing dramatically reduced admission for students. Premieres by Erberk Eryilmaz, Igor Tchachenko, Jonathan Leshnoff, Gabriella Frank, Korine Fujiwara, Steven Gerber, and I-Uen Huang were performed alongside works from the standard repertoire including the middle Beethoven quartets, the string quartet of Bedrich Smetana, Bela Bartoks 5th quartet, and the 6th and 9th quartets by Sergei Taneyev, with a smattering of popular pieces including Cole Porters Caravan, Billy Joels MyLife, Paul Desmonds Take Five, and Dave Brubecks Blue Rondo a la Turk, arranged for Carpe Diem by quartet member Korine Fujiwara. While on tour, Carpe Diem performed ticketed concerts in Staunton VA, Nantucket and Boston MA, Mount Angel Abbey OR, Saginaw MI, Columbus and Greenville OH, Seattle and Tacoma WA, Utica and New York, NY, Washington DC, Pittsburgh PA, Fayetteville TX, and Saint Louis, MO, as well as on the radio in many of the above markets. Additionally, Carpe Diem collaborated with pipa player Yihan Chen and santur master Dariush Sagafi during the 13-14 season, incorporating ancient instruments from non-Western musical traditions into their regular performance season. Despite the political climate of the last decade, Carpe Diem has embarked on a performance and recording project to promote the music of Persian Iranian composers. This rich musical culture has been largely overlooked in the west, particularly the United States. Through relationships forged during Carpe Diems 2012 Persian Musical Feast - a weekend of Persian art, poetry, food, carpet-weaving, classical Iranian art and traditional Iranian folk music - the quartet was invited to perform a concert of music composed by Iranian-born composer Reza Vali at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. Carpe Diem completed sessions for volume 4 of a planned 5 disk set of the string quartets of Sergei Taneyev, distributed on the Naxos label. The quartet also successfully finished recording sessions for string quartets by contemporary composers Richard Jordan Smoot and Peter Barbieri. Champions of todays new music, Carpe Diem commissioned works by Lawrence Dillon, Korine Fujiwara, and Jonathan Leshnoff. Carpe Diem also worked with the composition students of Carnegie Mellon Universitys School of Music in workshops and recording sessions, encouraging young composers through question and answer talk-back sessions and providing them with immediate feedback. The quartet recorded a performance of each work in a recording studio so each young composer had a high quality representation of their work to add to their compositional portfolio. Carpe Diem continued its collaborations with the Columbus Dance Theatre. Both organizations are committed to combining different art forms to create new and original projects that reach outside the traditional boundaries of both mediums. All works feature the dancers and musicians on stage together. In January, Carpe Diem and CDT presented Claudel. This was a world premiere production featuring a new musical score by Korine Fujiwara, commissioned for this event and dedicated to Columbus Dance Theatre and Carpe Diem String Quartet, a multi-media presentation of, photography, text, song, and dance, with images of the sculpted works of Camille Claudel superimposed upon and combined with photos of the dancers, and a set of original poems written especially for the collaborative work by poet Kathleen Kirk. All facets were brought to life by the brilliant choreography of Tim Veach, the compellin”

“EXPLANATION All fees paid to professional musicians contracted to perform with the organization.”