Lumia String Quartet to showcase musical chemistry in first recital

Sharing a passion for chamber music, Jasmine Lau, Luke Santonastaso, Brita Tastad and Jennifer Wu, graduate students at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, were just a group of friends before forming the Lumia String Quartet.

Created during winter quarter of this year, the Lumia String Quartet is one of UCLA’s newest chamber groups. The group will be performing its first public recital on Friday at the Powell Library rotunda with Lau as cellist, Santonastaso and Tastad as violinists and Wu as violist.

Santonastaso said that he, Wu and Lau became friends because they were in the UCLA Camarades, a string chamber music ensemble composed of the School of Music’s string faculty and the school’s most talented students.

“(Wu, Lau and myself) had played together before, and so we decided to pursue string quartet repertoire instead of piano quintet or a string trio,” Santonastaso said. “The perfect person to complete the quartet was (Tastad). She’s one of our colleagues from the string department.”

In addition to contributing her talents as a violinist to the quartet, Tastad is also partly responsible for conceiving the string quartet’s name. Tastad said that she sought help from a good friend who suggested a few names, one of which was “Lumia.”

“(Lumia) was the one that kind of stuck, because the term ‘lumia’ refers to ‘art created by light’ and we thought that represented us well,” Tastad said.

What also sets the quartet apart from many of UCLA’s chamber groups is the nature of its creation. Santonastaso said that the school’s faculty members are the ones who usually put these chamber groups together based on the students’ education, year and level. In contrast, the Lumia String Quartet is the product of four friends choosing to come together because of similar goals and motivations.

“Normally the groups created by the faculty only play a concert at the end of each quarter and just combine to play a movement,” Santonastaso said.

Being in the Lumia String Quartet allows the four to dedicate more time to play and prepare complete works, Santonastaso said.

Santonastaso said that the quartet members’ chemistry extends beyond their personal friendship and spills over into their music. Lau said that many string quartets that have musical chemistry don’t necessarily have personal chemistry because the members rarely ever interact outside of rehearsal. But for the Lumia String Quartet, Lau said, both musical and emotional chemistry come together nicely.

For its recital, the quartet will be performing two complete string quartet pieces, Mozart’s String Quartet No. 19 in C Major, K. 465 (“Dissonance”) and Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 6 in F Minor, Op. 80.

The combination of these two pieces in a performance gives this upcoming recital an interesting twist because the two are so different and so contrasting in tone and emotion, Tastad said.

“We’ll start the program with Mozart and end with Mendelssohn. Each has a very different emotional palate,” Santonastaso said. “(The Mozart piece) is lighthearted and fun. (The Mendelssohn piece) has a lot more pain and anguish. It goes through the stages of grief.”

Lau said that the pieces were chosen because they’re canonical, monumental works in string quartet literature.

“The pieces showcase our talent well,” Tastad said. “It’s not just a solo for the first violinist all the time. All of our parts are very intricate, especially in the Mozart piece.”

Santonastaso said he hopes that the audience will gain an understanding of how extraordinary and culturally significant these string quartet pieces are and wants to guide them on a listening journey.

“We will hopefully benefit as much as the audience. As musicians, we’re also performers. Each performance helps us establish how to present ourselves,” Santonastaso said. “Each performance is working towards that goal of translating what’s on the page to the audience.”