With the close of the year approaching, I always think back over recent months, but this time it's required less effort than usual.

Dropped upon my doorstep on Friday, literally, and loudly, were two copies of the new Musical America, and inside I found a wonderful article by Eugenia Zukerman that features the Voxare String Quartet and in particular their "Voxare Meets Man With a Movie Camera" project. Of course, I featured this same project in a recent edition of my own newsletter. More on this below.

I will follow the same theme of revisiting some past stories - but with entertaining new twists - in my latest Hoboken update.

For those of you coming to New York for the Arts Presenters and Chamber Music America conference, I will of course look forward to (re)visiting with you as well in the New Year.

Arts Presenters: Booth #202 (Rhinelander)

Best wishes,

Robert

There is a back story to this - there always is.  It was just about this time last year that the Voxare String Quartet signed up with my agency. Of course one important item of business was to review the quartet's recent engagements to make sure they were headed back to revisit (our theme here today) old friends. One particular festival that came up was Music Mountain in northeast Connecticut. Voxare had played there in 2010, and the festival director, Nick Gordon, greatly wanted them to return, but there was an unreconcilable scheduling conflict to everyone's dismay. But then, in early May a group that was scheduled to perform at the festival had to withdraw and a call came in to find out if Voxare were free. They were.

Most performances by string quartets at Music Mountain include a collaboration, and this concert was no exception, with the collaboration being a certain flutist - you guessed it - Eugenia Zukerman. They played together a lovely adaptation by Robert Stallman of the Schubert G-minor violin sonata; this was bookended by Beethoven's Op. 18, No.4 and Op. 130 (with the Grosse Fuge).

And evidently some conversation backstage about Dziga Vertov. Wouldn't you expect as much? "Voxare Meets Man With a Movie Camera" is a performance by Voxare of their own soundtrack, woven together from music for string quartet by Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, and Mosolov, to accompany a screening of Dziga Vertov's groundbreaking 1929 documentary.

Ms. Zukerman's article in Musical America is titled "Sailing into the Future," and it surveys the innovative ways many orchestras, chamber ensembles, and soloists are negotiating challenging times.

Here's what she wrote about Voxare:

The Voxare String Quartet was founded just as the recession hit in 2008. Started by two couples-violist Erik Peterson and violinist Emily Ondracek-Peterson, violinist Galina Zhdanova and cellist Adrian Daurov-the four of them went to school together, and becoming a quartet "just sort of happened." By 2010 they had won prestigious awards and started a new-music series at Columbia University's Teachers College called "Dig It." But they needed visibility. A strategic decision they made in 2010 paid off. They watched all the silent Russian films they could find from 1929 and went through a huge chunk of modernist Soviet repertoire. "We had a feeling a concert with silent-film footage might lead to a nice review," says violist Erik Peterson. "And luckily, the New York Times came to the concert and loved it." The Quartet also transcribes popular and rock music and plays it in alternate venues. Stretching their reach into contemporary music, they are part of an international computer conference at Dartmouth that is assimilating electronic and acoustic music. "Trends in new music are exciting and positive," says Peterson. "And those musicians who are doing well have a real enthusiasm for all kinds of music. We're looking forward to the future. We're not afraid to take risks."

What you will learn about when you read this article in its entirety is a variety of ways that artists have been entrepreneurial in their approach to career building, often taking a situation that seems grim and standing it on end. But even more, you will see profiles in classical music that demonstrate the basic underpinning of the music itself: Taking what is traditional and reinventing it - revisiting it if you will - to make it dynamic and new. This includes how music is presented to the public, and when you think of it that way, Mozart was an entrepreneur, too, who made some good coin off of subscription concerts, though he would have benefited from a good accountant. Paganini and Liszt knew a thing or two about business, I would say. I will need to do further research to see if they were inspired by recessions, however!

Links:

• More on the Voxare String Quartet.
• Download Voxare String 2012-2013 Programs.
• Listen to the Voxare String Quartet.