Musician working to help children

Mike Reynolds of the Muir Quartet has found that producing beautiful music is not only an end in itself, it can also be a tool to help others — and the environment.

At the time of his interview with the Deseret Morning News, Reynolds was tired from a long drive from Montana and a late arrival in Utah. "I run a foundation called Classics for Kids Foundation," he said, "and we have a chamber music (program) that I run in Montana as part of that." The 17th Annual Montana Chamber Music Festival benefits national children's programs through chamber music concerts and private benefit concerts.

Now that he's in Utah, he'll be working with the Emerging Quartets and Composers Program — something else that was initiated by the Muir Quartet. The purpose, he said, is to bring young composers and young quartets together to produce some world premieres.

"We've been doing it since 1990, and Utah has become a very favorite summer home to all of us. We work very intensively with the young quartets on honing their playing skills as a group.

"There are master classes, there are lectures on how to run your quartet as a business, how to get along, which is a huge issue for quartets. There's an enormous attrition rate for young quartets, and we like to pass on what we've learned from our own mistakes in the last 25 years . . . as far as how to survive and prosper as a chamber ensemble."

The Pacifica Quartet is one of the groups that has come out of the program to become extremely successful.

Composer Joan Towers comes to work with the students, as well. "Joan Towers is an old friend," he added. "She wrote her first quartet for us."

Usually the Muir includes a work by Towers in one of its programs — however, this year there won't be one in its first concert. Mozart's String Quartet K387 in G major, Debussy's String Quartet and Beethoven String Quartet Op. 131 are the planned program.

"The Mozart Quartet in G major is one our favorite Mozart Quartets," he said. And the Debussy, he added, was a revolutionary work for its day. Although the tonalities are accepted now, he said that in Debussy's time, they were "quite a shocker."

"Beethoven String Quartet Op. 131 was Beethoven's favorite quartet," he continued. "It was one of the last five late quartets that he actually wrote after his Ninth Symphony. He considered his quartets to be his finest medium and basically spent his final days writing these last quartets. So Op. 131 is a magnificent piece. It's in seven movements, which are contiguous. You don't ever stop playing."