Thirty Years Ago Today

I don’t often take trips down memory lane, yet today I’m gonna make an exception. I say gunna, ‘cause what did I know back in 1979 anyway.

But there I was, not 22 years old, ready to take the world of classical chamber music by storm. And guess what, in some cities, I think we did, my 3 colleagues and I.

That is, I hesitate to tell, a lot of cities under populations of 50,000.

We were the 4 muskateers in my mind. Heck, the cellist was a pilot. On several occasions we flew our own tour. Eating out every meal, a dream. And I liked being on the road in a car with 3 other people, there was always somebody that wanted to talk.

When the piano quartet was formed, the next youngest member to myself was 29. The pianist and violist were in their early fifties; some 30 years separated us.

The pianist, as we soon found out, liked to drink. I’ve one vivid memory of collecting him at a bar, one morning. He started early and finished late, on tour.

Yet in spite of all, that guy was in a class with Clara Haskill when he sat down to play Mozart. And I liked him, looked up to him, and tried to make music that he would feel good about.

The violist was the only female; an incredibly soulful Jewish girl from New York. Crazy as heck, I would come to feel at times, but someone who MADE you listen when she played.

Our cellist had only a couple years before finished a Master’s degree in chemistry. One day, while sitting in a lab, he thought, ‘I’ve got a choice here. I can spend my life working in a lab, mostly by myself, or I can get back practicing the cello and have a life!’

We were lucky to have him, he made it happen, really. Together the two of us plied the managements, and within the first year had landed a spot on one of the most coveted managements in New York.

Classical music was just reaching the top of a long expansion phase. Today things are tighter, maybe, I don’t really know. Couple years back when I had the New Hollywood String Quartet things seemed a bit tighter. A weeks earnings on the road in the late seventies seemed to go a wee bit further than a weeks earnings on the road in 2002.

Well, anyway, thought I’d just give you a glimpse of what it was like. If you’d like more, just hollar.

All the best,

Clayton Haslop

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