Reuben Kebede, first violinist of the Ivalas Quartet, speaks with KGNU’s Sanford Baran. Reuben shares insights about the group’s journey, mission, and dedication to spotlighting underrepresented composers. He emphasizes the importance of engaging younger audiences to ensure the longevity of classical music. The Ivalas Quartet is performing on September 24th at Dazzle in Denver.
Sanford Baran: Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Reuben Kebede, the first violinist of the acclaimed Ivalas Quartet. Since their formation at the University of Michigan in 2017, the Ivalas Quartet has been making waves in the classical music world, celebrated for their passionate performances and commitment to spotlighting the works of BIPOC composers, held by The Strad for playing with tremendous heart and beauty.
The Ivalas has performed on prestigious stages across the country, including Carnegie Hall and the Aspen Music Festival. This talented ensemble is set to perform at Dazzle in Denver on September 24th, where they’ll bring their unique energy and artistry to a program featuring works by Carlos Simon, Derrick Skye, Eleanor Alberga, and Jesse Montgomery.
Today we’re thrilled to have Ivalas violinist Reuben Kebede with us to discuss the quartet’s journey. Reuben, welcome to the show.
Reuben Kebede: Thank you so much for having me.
Sanford Baran: So to start, the Ivalas Quartet was formed after a conversation about the absence of representation in classical music. Can you share more about that initial discussion and what motivated you and the other members to start this journey together?
Reuben Kebede: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for the question. So the most important thing was we just really enjoyed playing together. And then after some time, we realized that we were a quartet that was full of underrepresented people in classical music.
One of the things that’s very personal for me is when I was a kid, at my elementary school a quartet came to perform. It was very inspiring for me at the time, but the members of the group weren’t really representative of the population of the school. That’s one of the things that I think has always really been a personal thing for me, and has helped, because we go into schools a lot and perform. I think it’s really important for kids, especially now that we’re in the New York City area.
We go into schools and for kids to see a group performing that looks, and in a lot of cases, speaks like them. Our cellist, Pedro, his first language is Spanish. I think when kids see that, they can think, “Wow, maybe I can do this.” If we’ve gone into a school and maybe one child out of everyone thinks, “Wow, I want to try playing the violin,” then I think we’ve really accomplished what we set out to do.
Sanford Baran: As the first violinist of Ivalas, what has your personal journey been like? In the world of classical music, were there specific moments or mentors that shaped your path?
Reuben Kebede: Yeah, absolutely. Thinking about all the mentors I’ve had over the years, a big influence for us was the Takács Quartet. It’ll be really nice to be back in our old stomping grounds and think about the time that we had with them. Of course, at any of the institutions we’ve had residencies at, we were at Colorado with the Takács, and then we just finished up at the Juilliard School with the Juilliard String Quartet.
I think each of those experiences you have gives you a unique perspective from that group’s view and how they might do things. It’s really important to have mentors like that in the chamber music world that can really be influential and help along the way.
Sanford Baran: Yeah, definitely. Over the summer, I attended quite a few concerts of the Colorado Music Festival, and Takács performed one night. Also, the Danish String Quartet. This should be obvious, but it wasn’t to me, but I had this revelation that, listening to these different quartets, they have different sounds.
Reuben Kebede: Yes.
Sanford Baran: How would you describe Ivalas’s sound?
Reuben Kebede: I think it’s something that has been evolving, since we’re still a relatively young quartet. As I was mentioning, in different residencies that we’ve had, I think things have changed. I’ve always really admired the Takács sound, and I think in a lot of ways we emulate that, or strive to do that. But of course with our own touch to it. I would say always just warmth.
Sanford Baran: The Ivalas is, among other things, dedicated to spotlighting BIPOC composers, both past and present. How do you choose the pieces you perform and what impact do you hope these performances have on your audience?
Reuben Kebede: That’s a huge part of our mission. On every concert we perform, we try to include a piece by an underrepresented composer. At least one piece, maybe more. This concert that we’re going to be playing at Dazzle is actually a little bit different from what we normally do. For a lot of our concerts, we’ll program underrepresented works or works by underrepresented composers alongside the warhorses of the canon, more well known pieces, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven quartets. I think that’s a great way of doing things because it shows that the pieces can stand alongside those, and we’re trying to change and evolve the canon that way.
I think it works really well because one of the things we’ll do is, we’ll have a common theme throughout the program. So all of the pieces will be tied to this theme. For the Dazzle concert, the theme has to do with migration and social change. And also how composers’ individual experiences have affected how they compose or what they put into their music.
So that’s the theme for that program. And you’ll see how Carlos Simon, Eleanor Alberga, Jesse Montgomery, and Derrick Skye have all done that with their pieces and how personal experiences that they’ve had have influenced their composition and how it comes across in their music.
As far as picking pieces, we all listen to a lot of music. There are a lot of great resources. So in some instances we’ll spend a lot of time looking up pieces, doing research, looking at databases. There are some good resources now for contemporary pieces, underrepresented pieces, things like that.
Sometimes you’ll have a personal connection to a composer. So Carlos Simon, for example, Pedro and I went to the University of Michigan at the same time as him. So that’s how we have that connection. In other cases, just people that we’ve really admired. The piece by Derrick Skye, we were able to commission that piece. So he actually wrote that for us.
Sanford Baran: So particularly when approaching contemporary works, it is interesting that there is data and sources to get context around it. Certainly like on a commission, it’s brand new, there isn’t that much context. So works like, “Warmth from Other Suns” by Carlos Simon or “Strum” by Jesse Montgomery. What’s the quartet’s process for interpreting and bringing these pieces to life?
Reuben Kebede: That’s a great question. So the Simon we’ve actually recorded, and for us that was a pandemic project. When the pandemic happened, we were in Colorado in our residency with Takács at the university, and concerts just stopped, at least for a little while.
There were some things that were pre-recorded and then we’d send out. But that was actually really nice to have that project during that time, because the four of us could be together and just do the recording. We were able to work with him a little bit and played it for him over Zoom, so not as good as doing it live, but we were able to get feedback that way. It’s an interesting process doing that, because we’d play a section and he might say, “Oh, that’s not quite right. Why don’t we try this?” So it’s a thing that while you’re working on the piece with the composer, it’s also evolving and they might change some things. There are also cases where we play something and he’d say, “Oh, let’s do it exactly like this. You’re not quite getting what I’m going for there.”
I think a lot of composers will really know what they want. But then in other situations, they’ll hear a section and say, “Hey, why don’t we try this?” And then they’ll send a new part or have you mark up the part. So it’s a little different than what they initially went for.
Sanford Baran: And when you’re playing the classics, I guess you could say there’s a lot of baggage around some of these classics. Not necessarily in a bad way. There’s this tension between honoring what we think the composer wants, but he’s not around anymore. But there’s a lot of documentation or recordings of how it was done, versus, in this contemporary setting, we can actually speak to the composer.
What’s it like when you’re playing things that have been recorded many times by great quartets, and you want to add your own personality to it and maybe try to honor what the composer had in mind? I think that’s subjective.
Reuben Kebede: That’s a great question too. It’s like the idea of if we’re playing Beethoven, what are we going to do differently that the Takács recording doesn’t already achieve or the Juilliard String Quartet. I think one of the things we always try to keep in mind when we’re playing a more established repertoire is that when the Beethoven late quartets were being played, they were very much new music.
They were very difficult, in some cases, for audiences to understand. I don’t remember which one it was, I think it was Opus 127. As soon as the piece was played, people wanted to hear the last movement again. They wanted to hear it over. Because there was just so much information to process. Things were so really fresh and new, and it was a lot to wrap your ears around.
So I think one of the things we always try to keep in mind with our interpretations, we want to honor what the composer wanted. Of course, sometimes it’s hard to tell. With Urtext first editions, you don’t know what the composer actually wanted. If they change something or if the publisher just changed it or what they wanted. But one of the things we always keep in mind is that it was new music. And I think that’s also very important. We always share that with audiences if we’re playing on the same program a Beethoven quartet and a quartet by Eleanor Alberga. Just keep an open mind with the music because it may sound new, but the Beethoven was also new music.
Sanford Baran: Yeah, exactly. Classical music has tended, at least the audience has tended to skew to an older demographic. Maybe that’s starting to change where it becomes more relevant in terms of what’s happening today.
Reuben Kebede: Yeah. That’s something that we’re always trying to change and something that we’re working on. We’ve been here in New York, we’ve been going into a lot of schools and playing. I think if you can really show the next generation how cool this music is, then that’s how we can build audiences. Or at least, for the longevity of chamber music, I think it’s very important.
Sanford Baran: This is a follow up question, but probably a repeat question. What role do you believe Ivalas plays in this evolution happening in the world of classical music?
Reuben Kebede: We love playing concerts, but we also just love the educational aspect of it and engaging with the community, things like that. I know I already spoke about going into schools and playing for kids, but we do a lot of concerts in the community as well. I think some of my favorite experiences have been playing in veterans homes, retirement homes, places like that. We played in some spaces for those who are visually impaired. Played in the ICU. That was quite an experience.
One of my favorite moments was playing in a veteran’s home and a lot of these guys hadn’t really heard chamber music before. In this specific case, we were playing a Mendelssohn quartet and in Mendelssohn’s A minor, the Opus 13 quartet in the last movement, there are all of these first violin cadenzas. In one of them I’m playing, and right in the middle, it gets really intense and right in the middle of it, this guy’s just like, “Yeah!” And I was like, whoa, this is awesome.
In a concert hall, a lot of that type of thing is frowned upon, but back in Mozart’s time, Haydn’s time, there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence of that kind of thing. It was really funny and a lot of fun to engage with the audience that way and just feed off of that energy that you’re getting back. We were all totally on board. Like, yeah, this is great. If he is loving it this much and has that kind of reaction to it, you don’t want to silence that.
Sanford Baran: Yeah, I think one of the things that seems to be evolving is the relationship between performers and artists and the listeners. As there is more of a sharing and closeness, that adds something impact wise to what can occur in performance.
Reuben Kebede: Yeah, I think exactly what you’re saying, the experience that involves everyone, not just the artists on the stage. I’ve been thinking about chamber music a lot that way recently, as being an art that involves everyone in the room. Everyone’s involved. So yeah, that, that speaks a lot to me, what you just said.
Sanford Baran: Looking ahead, what are some goals or projects that you and the Ivalas Quartet are excited to pursue? How do you hope to continue making an impact on the classical music world?
Reuben Kebede: One of the things we want to do is record an album. We haven’t done that yet. We just have, we have a single out, which is the Carlos Simon piece. We’re figuring out what repertoire exactly we want to put on there. We have a few programs I think are really compelling, so that’s one of the things that we want to do in the next couple years.
Also more immediately, we want to record Derrick Skye’s piece, “Deliverance”, that was commissioned for us and that we’ll be performing at Dazzle. Probably this fall we’ll be doing that, so that’s coming up. A lot of recording things. I think those are the biggest things on the horizon, and then, just playing a lot of concerts.
Sanford Baran: What advice would you give to young musicians? Particularly those from underrepresented communities who aspire to a career in classical music.
Reuben Kebede: I think there are a lot of things that I would say, but maybe firstly, finding mentors who have a similar vision and who you can really trust and you look up to. That’s really vital. It’s one of the things that can keep you going. You can get good advice when you have a hard decision to make, things like that along the way.
Another one is to do whatever you can to be as inspired as possible. Inspiration is the biggest thing that pushes us forward.
When I was younger, and I still do it now. It’s just listening to a lot of music, consuming a lot of music played really well. It’s nice in New York, I can go to concerts all the time and see the best quartets play here, and that’s really so vital, it’s indispensable. That’s one of the most important things.
So I would say those two, and then this one’s a more practical one, just consistency. If you can practice a little bit every day, it’s a lot better than doing a ton right before your lesson or something. Of course, we’ve all been there, but the more consistent you can be in the long run, you’re going to have great results.
Sanford Baran: Reuben, it’s been a real pleasure to speak with you. Such an interesting conversation.
Reuben Kebede: Yes. Thank you for having me.
Sanford Baran: Take care. This is Sanford Barron for KGNU.
