Name: Catalyst Quartet
Members: Karla Donehew Perez (violin), Abi Fayette (violin), Paul Laraia (viola), Karlos Rodriguez (cello)
Interviewee: Paul Laraia
Nationalities: American (Abi Fayette, Paul Laraia), Puerto-Rican-American (Karla Donehew Perez), Cuban-American (Karlos Rodriguez)
Current release: The Catalyst Quartet's UNCOVERED Vol. 3: Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, George Walker, William Grant Still is out via Azica.

If you enjoyed this interview with Catalyst Quartet and would like to stay up to date with the ensemble's music, releases, and tour dates, visit their official website. The ensemble is also on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter.



When did you first start getting interested in musical interpretation?

The Catalyst Quartet was founded in 2010 with a mission to effect change in the classical music sphere through the power of the string quartet.

The main facets in which we approached this endeavour were through innovative and diverse programming, performing in underserved communities, and especially through a commitment to robust musical interpretations.

The ethos we lived strived to interpret by was one that the famous Juilliard Quartet had long championed, “to dive deeply into brand new works and lesser known works with the deep reverence and respect one would use towards the established masterworks, and to bring a freshness of perspective and reinvigorate the great tried and true works of old”.

In our 13th season, we still live by this Credo. Our Bach/Gould project demonstrates this commitment and juxtaposition.



Which artists, approaches, albums or performances captured your imagination in the beginning when it comes to the art of interpretation?

The Catalyst Quartet has a deep respect and love for the string quartet medium and especially to the classic American quartets of the Golden Age of quartet playing. We have already mentioned the Juilliard Quartet for their deep commitment to new music and for the serious way they navigated and redefined the classics. We also deeply love the playing of the Guarneri Quartet, whom serve as a great example of the exponential power that great “quartet playing” can create.

In addition, many of the Catalyst Quartet members inherited the incredible ethos from the Cleveland Quartet, where the joy of music making meets with a detailed and generous commitment to bringing the composers intentions to life.

Are there examples for interpretations that were entirely surprising to you personally and yet completely convincing?

When the quartet was preparing our arrangement and interpretation of JS Bach’s Goldberg Variations, we came across the recording by Jazz and overall musician Keith Jarret on harpsicord.



Not only were we surprised and intrigued by the grounded and classic qualities of the interpretation, but we were especially moved by the places where his individual take seemed to be so fresh but made so much sense.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to interpretation? Do you see yourself as part of a tradition or historic lineage?

We definitely feel a connection in the lineage of historical quartet playing and we strive for all of the incredible qualities that have been honed and taught over centuries.

Building from that place, we also aim to challenge the set narratives and use our interpretations to tell the stories of our time, and make connections that transcend time and place.

Could you describe your approach to interpretation on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

In our Uncovered project, which is a multi album anthology of the string quartet applicable works by historically important Black Composers, our approach to interpreting works which did not have an established canon of interpretations to build off of, we did literarary and auditory research in order to understand the context and history of the composers.

We studied the sounds of their time and spheres, the players they admired, and the spirituals which they all inherited and developed in their own ways, and attempted to bring all of those elements to the table through the lense of a modern approach to the quartet playing.

What was your own learning curve / creative development like when it comes to interpretation - what were challenges and breakthroughs?

One very immediate learning curve in a string quartet is finding a collaborative process where each member can input equally and be able to engage with each others ideas in authentic ways. The more deeply one believes in a certain path, the harder it is for them to walk a seemly contradictory one, and in string quartet we are constantly asked of each other to embrace those walks with wide open minds and hearts.

Not only does this take immense trust in your colleagues (especially when you can’t find the value in their suggestion) but also a virtuosity of flexibility and daring.

One of the key phrases often used with regards to interpretation are the “composer's intentions”. What is your own perspective on this topic and its relevance for your own interpretations?

The Catalyst Quartet takes a composer first approach to interpretation.

From our many interactions working and workshopping pieces with living composers, it is evident to us that the interpreters are more often than not, called upon by the composers to utilize their own craft and judgment in order to bring the score to life. This is even true in cases where one plays something slightly differently in front of the composer and they prefer it to what they wrote.

In the case of long deceased composers, we can not give ourselves free license to change the composers markings. Instead we use what we know about the composer and come up with the most accurate estimation of their full intentions sonically. From here, we use the markings as guiding stars, where the gravity of the composer's universe pulls us to make certain choices in order to bring out their voice.

In cases where evidence supports a literal take, we honor that, but as the evidence becomes murkier, we move more and more into bringing out the big picture.

What role does improvisation play for your interpretations?

In through-composed music, which is the majority of our repertoire, we take the approach that musical phrases must seem fresh as if newly composed, but any variations must stay within the interpretive structures that we decided as a group.

An example may be of a phrase that we decided was a low point and should have a pleading sadness to it … in one concert someone may initiate an especially soft version, one day it could be slightly slower, and on another it could have slightly stalled articulations as if pleading.

The art of coordinating these changes whilst holding up the structures is one of the finest challenges and opportunities in quartet playing.

Interpretations can be wildly different live compared to the studio. What is this like for you? With regards to the live situation, what role do the audience and the performance space play for your interpretation? With regards to the studio situation, what role do sound, editing possibilities and other production factors play for your interpretation?

In the case of making recordings, the hope is that the final version will contain all the ideals that one would want to communicate through the piece.

The double edged sword of live performance is that there is a constant flow between attempting to achieve the ideal, and in the process of attempting, maybe falling into new and unexpected paths that are at once “less ideal” but perhaps even greater than what could have been previously imagined.

Especially in the case of live performance with a great and attentive audience, the energy of the room can inspire and fuel this process to create absolute magic otherwise not possible. With this energetic fire comes risk, and with risk, the possibility of the less ideal.

Finding balance and being able to thrive in both of these spaces is another one of the great arts in chamber music. The capabilities of the studio make it possible to construct the ideal, however it is really the producer who takes on that role of inspiring a live space energy take after take, hour after hour, in a grueling process that is quite far from the magic of the live?

Artists can return to a work several times throughout the course of their career, with different results. Tell me about a work where this has been the case for you, please.

One of the first pieces CQ worked on was George Walker’s Lyric for strings, which is the standalone version of his 2nd movement for his 1st full String Quartet. It is a deeply beautiful work and has quite a number of challenges, in terms of intonation, tempo, and crafting long seemless lines with melodic pass offs and such.

The quartet has brought back the work at least in 3 different periods of our careers and each time those same difficulties where there, however the types of solutions and processes by which we rehearsed them varied greatly with age, experience, and the context of our lives and the other repertoire we were associating it with.

In our “middle” period, we had made the association of the Lyric for Strings with Barber’s Adagio. The two composers were colleagues at the Curtis Institute and both extracted their stunning slow movements out of their less famous quartets to becoming large scales works full of gravitas and lushness.

For our latest Uncovered Volume III, we put the movement back into the context of the full quartet where it was originally conceived and found that by doing just that, it immediately took on a different feel. All of the layers of our previous interpretations were still under the surface, but reimagined in a way that fit its new context, as a soaring respite for two ferocious and searching outer movements.