A zzyzx is indigenous to areas of New York, Washington D.C., and Colorado. It can often be spotted in its natural habitat eating extremely spicy(!!) ethnic foods and chicken wings while drinking local micro brews. It has been sighted wandering around random music schools practicing furiously until the late hours of the night and spending hours looking up hilarious youtube videos.
We are often asked many questions about how we got started as a group and also how we are able to stay together since we live all over the country (literally!). So, here’s the story about us. Hmmm… where to begin…
We all went to Indiana University for one reason – to study with Otis Murphy (and we heard they have really amazing pizza there!). While we were students, we were primarily focused on performing as soloists, however, a few of us were in various chamber groups that would constantly be changing due to people graduating, moving away, etc. All four of us became very close friends over the years – we would often hang out on the weekends, go to Bear’s Place after masterclass, eat lunch together, etc. When it came to Stacy and Stephen’s last year at IU, we thought of an ingenious idea… let’s form a quartet! Why didn’t we think of this before?! continuing…
Part of the challenge of starting a new group is also coming up with a name. We thought of names for weeks, but couldn’t really come up with anything that was “catchy” or “original” and something that people would remember. One afternoon, we were having lunch at the infamous Bear’s Place, where many “enlightening” conversations would happen, and Dana said, “How about Zzyzx?”. All of us said… “What’s a Zzyzx?!”… and “How do you spell it?!”. Dana explained to us that it is a road in California, on which he often travels when he visits family in Costa Mesa, California. A degree of mystery also surrounds the area that Zzyzx Road leads to and local legends have dubbed it “the road to nowhere ” (but hopefully not for us!) There’s even a movie about Zzyzx Road (We watched it once. We don’t recommend it.)! We looked up more info about this strange word and found out that it is the last word listed alphabetically in atlases, dictionaries, and directories! So, we figured naming ourselves after something that is difficult to spell and pronounce would be a great idea?! All joking aside, we actually are really happy that Dana came up with the name – it’s very unique and memorable and for some strange reason, it somehow fits our group! Besides, it’s a great conversation starter!
After our first year together as a quartet, Stacy moved to New York to be a saxophonist with the West Point Band and Stephen moved to pursue his doctoral studies at the University of Iowa. The next year was somewhat of a trial year for us to see if we would be able to perform together even if we weren’t able to rehearse on a regular basis. We only did a few performances that year and felt that we continued to improve as a group even though we didn’t have as much rehearsal time as we did when we were all at IU together. The following year, we began to do more frequent performances including a couple of tours and decided to record our first CD. Shortly after recording, Dana won a position in the US Navy Band in Washington D.C. and Matt moved to Rochester, NY to begin his doctoral degree at the Eastman School of Music.
Although some may think that living so far apart would make it difficult to function as a chamber group, we have somehow managed to find ways to make it work. We email a lot(!) and skype frequently to talk about repertoire, performances, business, etc. Typically, we will have a long rehearsal weekend once a year in the fall to put new music together for our upcoming performances. We all come extremely prepared, have practiced our parts, studied the scores and have written cues in our individual parts. We typically rehearse 5-8 hours a day during those weekends depending on the difficulty of the music that we are preparing. When we get together for performances, we will usually rehearse the day before and do the performance the following day. Most importantly, we always make time to have some fun whenever we are together though! What’s that saying about all work and no play? 🙂 Overall, we have a great time together and have become best friends over the years! Performing together as a group has become a highlight of all of our careers so far and we look forward to many more years to come!
Zzyzx Quartet 