Marian Anderson String Quartet impacting communities through music
BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) – Music has a unique ability to soothe the soul, connect and inspire.
That’s what the Marian Anderson String Quartet has been doing for over three decades.
The group was founded in 1989 as the Chaminade Quartet. In 1991, they won the International Cleveland Quartet Competition, which marked them as the first African American ensemble to win a classical musical competition.
To commemorate the milestone, they decided to change their name. The string quartet had several options in mind but decided to honor contralto Marian Anderson with her permission.
“She’s not an instrumentalist,” member Diedra Lawrence said. “She’s a singer, but there was something about the dignity in which she elevated the issue of civil rights by focusing on the beauty of the art form that was just really compelling for us.”
Members met Anderson and said her legacy has served as a challenge.
“Now that we have her name, it reminds us to make sure that whatever we do, it is of a high quality,” Marianne Henry said.
The quartet has performed across the U.S. and France and has held several residencies at universities including California State University- Los Angeles, Prairie View A&M University and Texas A&M University.
They’ve also challenged what performance stages look like.
“I can say that I’ve played in juvenile detention centers and maximum security prisons and hot dog weeny roast festivals and brought this beautiful music and brought people together through this beautiful music is something that really matters to me,” member Nicole Cherry said.
In the same way they’ve brought others together through music, it’s also connected them.
“These ladies are my sisters, and I’m getting choked up here because when I came into the quartet, it was right after my dad died, like a year after, and they were with me as I then lost my sister and my mother and so that was my immediate family,” member Prudence McDaniel said.
This connection has carried the group for 34 years and encourages them to inspire the next generation.
“Take the risk,” Lawrence said. “It’s very easy to come up with a thousand reasons why I can’t, I’m too this, I don’t have enough that, I don’t have enough that, but if you listen to our history, we didn’t have enough of any of it but the heart just kept pulling, so we just kept following the pull, and it landed us in places that we could not possibly ever have imagined.”
The group has projects in the works. To keep up with them, you can follow their Facebook.
