Interdisciplinary residencies for institutions of higher learning and their communities have been a seminal part of the Alexander String Quartet’s work throughout its 20-year career, earning the ensemble international renown for contributions to education and audience development.  Current annual residencies include San Francisco State University in collaboration with San Francisco Performances; Baruch College in New York City; Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania; and St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York.  Residencies of various duration have also been presented or are planned by the Krannert Center at the University of Illinois, Penn State University, Pomona College, and Stanford University.

The Alexander String Quartet’s interdisciplinary approach seeks to address two major goals:

1. Breaking down barriers between disciplines.
2. Building audiences for the near term and the future by making the art of classical music accessible and relevant to all students and adults.

Over the years, the Alexander String Quartet has worked with professors in a panoply of fields to develop topics intended to expand the minds of a broad cross-section of each institution’s student body.  Prior to arriving on site, a residency coordinator facilitates direct communication between ASQ and faculty members to develop the content of classroom presentations.  Some of the fields and topics are listed below:

ARCHITECTURE
Blue-prints, Design vs. Function, Working with time and sound to create space

BUSINESS
ASQ, Inc.: A small corporation doing business on four continents

DANCE
Movement, Pulse, Use of Space, Frequency, Gesture, Timing & Improvisation within strict forms, Variation, Minuet to Tango, Ethnic Dance (Romania, Bulgaria, Latin America)

FINE ART & ART HISTORY
Line, Proportion, Symmetry, Style, Taste, Purpose of Art, Impressionism

HISTORY
Beethoven & Napoleon, World War I & Bartók, the Berlin Wall & Shostakovich, Nationalism (Janácek, Smetana, Bartók, Dvorák), Paris at the Turn of the 20th Century, Revolution in France, the American Ideal (Copland, Barber)

LITERATURE
Relationships between string quartets and literature from parallel literary and social movements, Beethoven & Shakespeare, the Beethoven—Tolstoy—Janácek connection

MATHEMATICS
Systems, Graphing, Symmetry, Proportion, Proofs, Geometric inversions, Twelve-Tone Music, Bartók’s division of the octave, Fugues

ORNITHOLOGY
Bird song and human musical communication, Identifying patterns and the value of these skills in field work, Quantifying what we hear (mental recording)

POETRY
Pulse, Meter, Verse, Poetry & Song (Schubert), Rhythm (James Joyce)

PSYCHOLOGY
Dynamics of a quartet of musicians, Lives of composers through their music, Mozart: Father & Son, Beethoven’s quartets as a musical diary

OTHER FIELDS
Sociology, Political Science, Art Criticism, Languages