Hamden | Music | Arts & Culture | Music Haven | COVID-19
Nicolas Rivetta, who has studied with Yaira Matyakubova and Patrick Doane in the 12 years he's been at Music Haven. Lucy Gellman Photo.
Nicolas Rivetta leaned all the way into a Bach concerto, his violin piercing the air. The bow worked its way across the strings as the instrument’s warble mingled with birdsong overhead. For an instant there was a glimmer of Rivetta’s 6-year-old self, learning to pick up the violin for the first time. That was 12 years ago. Then he was back in the present, notes stretching across the grass.
Rivetta is a senior at Wilbur Cross High School, and one in a growing number of Music Haven students heading to college as the organization matures well beyond its first decade. Saturday, he joined members of the Haven String Quartet outside the Eli Whitney Barn for the group’s first live performance since early 2020.
The Haven String quartet comprises Yaira Matyakubova and Gregory Tompkins on violin, Annalisa Boerner on viola, and Philip Boulanger on cello. It doubled as a senior sendoff, as both Rivetta and cellist Isabel Melchinger graduate from high school this spring. Both have studied at Music Haven for 12 years. Rivetta is headed to the University of Connecticut. Melchinger, who performed Sunday, will attend Georgetown University.
“Music Haven taught me social skills that I never would have learned anywhere else,” Rivetta said. “This year, I felt as if practicing calmed the mind. It gives me peace inside.”
Rivetta started as a student at Music Haven when the program itself was still in its infancy. He and his older sister Audrey were part of the organization’s early years at John C. Daniels School, where it existed under the leadership of musician and educator Tina Lee Hadari. He picked up the violin because it was what Adurey played, and “I wanted to do what she was doing.” Like her, he stuck with it.
He has studied with Matyakubova, a resident musician who is now Music Haven’s artistic director, and more recently with violinist Patrick Doane. Saturday, he stood before the quartet, back arched, and loosed a smooth melody from deep inside his instrument. Pursing his lips, he leaned forward, nearly flinching in anticipation of the next note. Then he relaxed, swaying as the music rose. Bach’s Concerto for Violin in A Minor came to life.
His violin sang and dipped, strings chirruping beneath his touch. It rose to something just short of—and far more joyous than—a wail. It let the movement breathe. Behind Rivetta, Phillip Boulanger’s cello became a gentle, reliable pulse, cutting through the air in short, deep bursts of sound. Violin and viola jumped into the conversation, so even-keeled it seemed that they could be guests at a garden party.
Rivetta’s violin pushed forward, doing a neat ballet with the other instruments. In the audience, attendees leaned forward, most too mesmerized to swat away aphids and mosquitoes that flew in for an evening meal. Sculptures by the sculptor Susan Clinard, whose studio occupies part of the barn, stared into the crowd at full attention. No sooner had the quartet finished than the audience burst into applause and Doane rushed the stage with a bouquet of bright flowers. From the second row, Rivetta’s family cheered him on.
Top: Members of the Haven String Quartet at Saturday's concert. Bottom, clockwise from top: HSQ members and Rivetta warm up, Matyakubova teaches a pint-sized Rivetta to hold a violin, Rivetta and Doane at the concert, Tina Lee Hadari teaches students at John C. Daniels School. Lucy Gellman and Music Haven Photos.
That celebration, cautious optimism and bridge from past to present flowed through the quartet’s set, presented among blooming trees and socially distanced chairs and benches in a sticky, early summer heat. It was there as members introduced themselves and their set, excited to play together without medical masks for the first time in over a year.
It was there as Executive Director Mandi Jackson introduced members of the Haven String Quartet, who have all been teaching virtually for 15 months, as “nothing short of superheroes this year.” And it was there in every cautiously lowered mask and exclamation of delight at seeing noses and mouths, still socially distanced.
“We are so happy to see your faces!” exclaimed Boerner at the top of the show.
In addition to Bach’s violin concerto, the quartet dipped into Florence Price’s 1951 Folksongs In Counterpoint, paying homage to a Black composer who was until recently widely overlooked and underplayed. Musicians also introduced attendees to the work of violinist Grażyna Bacewicz, a Polish composer who lived through both World Wars, studied in Paris, and played underground, secretive shows during World War II.
Boulanger said that her music, like Price’s, has gained more recognition as the musical world wakes to the fact that it cannot pull solely from the Great Pantheon of Dead White Men. He described her as a dynamo and veritable “Renaissance woman,” with a kind of tightness, ferocity and grace to her compositions that shows her skill as a composer.
As the quartet launched into her String Quartet no. 4, attendees got a glimpse of that mastery. The piece began with a whisper of violin, notes cautious until strings were suddenly swirling into each other. They climbed, an edge of desperation to them. Suddenly, they were nearly at each other’s throats. Matyakubova bounced until her whole body was moving with the music, a red bandanna catching the slick of sweat on her chin.
In their hands, Bacewicz’s work was careful, deliberate. Instruments knocked and blended into each other but each got a chance to shine. They became frenetic, entering into a kind of propulsive chase that was punctuated by staccato strings. Audience members seemed stunned when musicians pulled their bows triumphantly back, signaling the end.
When members of the quartet finished to more applause, Matyakubova encouraged the audience to spend time with Clinard’s new series Spaces In Between, which is presented as a multimedia exhibition online. Attendees peeled away from each other and drifted off into the sticky night. A few members of Music Haven snapped into cleaning mode, ferrying folding chairs into the barn.
Doane came up to Rivetta for a second time in the evening, this time with a pen and a program. He explained that he was going to need Rivetta’s autograph. In the fall, Rivetta will be heading to the University of Connecticut, where he plans to study engineering. He’s not sure that he will continue the violin, he said, but he plans to try. Doane wanted to get proof that he’d been Rivetta’s teacher before school picks up.
“We made the best of it,” he said afterwards. “He did a lot of good work. I’ve now known him for three years, and in that time, my favorite part was to see him connect with a piece of music.”
Find out more about Music Haven at the group's website.