Stanford's chamber
music program got its spark in 1997, when the University
began searching for a group of established performers
with a passion for all types of music who could excite
students and enrich the community’s musical life.
Former provost Condoleezza Rice explains that she and
others saw an ensemble-in-residence as a way for a well-rounded
university to offer world-class arts, enhance the public
profile of the music department and provide exceptional
music teachers for broadly talented students.
Stanford chose the St. Lawrence String Quartet from
a pool of some 80 chamber groups. “The SLSQ knocked
everybody’s socks off,” says Rice, an accomplished
pianist. “In addition to interacting well with
the students, they were so innovative and interesting.
They give 200-year-old music a new sound.”
It’s a sound reverberating around the Peninsula
and beyond, in part through a Hewlett Foundation grant
that funds a community outreach director for the quartet.
The foundation president and former Law School dean
Paul Brest calls the ensemble a jewel. “We’ll
know if we were successful,” he says, “if
the SLSQ is tenfold overbooked in years to come.”
