Thursday May 8

3-5pm: Participants arrive

5pm: Orientation and Welcome

6pm: Dinner with musicians

7-9pm: Sightreading round robin party with the Balourdet Quartet

Friday May 9

8:30am-10am-- breakfast

10-11:30am -- Deep Dive Chamber Music Workshop on Haydn's Lark Quartet- (Session 1)

11:30am-1pm--lunch

1-3:30pm-- Free Sightreading Session

3:30-4:30pm -- Balourdet Interactive Workshop: Art of String Quartet Playing: Listening and Creativity through Bach Chorales

5-6pm -- Pre-Concert Lecture with EAR Scholar and members of the Balourdet Quartet

6-7:30pm- Balourdet Quartet performance: "Strange Machines"

7:30-- dinner+post concert party

Saturday May 10

8:30am-10am-- breakfast

10-11:30am -- Deep Dive Chamber Music Workshop on Haydn's Lark Quartet- (Session 2)

11:30am-1pm--lunch

1-3:30pm-- Free Sightreading Session

3:30-4:30pm -- Balourdet Interactive Workshop: HiveMind: Somatic Exercises for Open Mindedness

5-6pm -- Pre-Concert Lecture with EAR Scholar and members of the Balourdet Quartet

6-7:30pm- Balourdet Quartet performance: "Fireside"

7:30— dinner and post concert party

Sunday May 11

8-9:30am-- Free Sightreading Session

9:30-11am-- Brunch and farewell

Tuition+Board+Lodging for Residential Participants (includes all activities, meals and a private room in a 2-bedroom suite): $900

Tuition+Board for Commuting Participants (includes all activities and meals): $550

Auditor Fee for Spouse/Partner (sharing room or commuting; includes all meals): $250

Participants of all levels and experience levels are welcome to attend in a playing capacity, provided that they have deemed themselves comfortable with sightreading standard quartet repertoire.

For those who wish to experience the content of the workshop but are not comfortable with string quartet playing/reading, there may be an option to attend simply as an auditor. Please contact us at avalochfarm@gmail.com if you would like to attend as an auditor.

THE BALOURDET QUARTET

The Balourdet Quartet is acclaimed for their vibrant energy and masterful blend of technical precision and emotional depth that brings a fresh perspective to both beloved classics and modern compositions. Its unique closeness and willingness to take creative risks earned it the 2024 Avery Fisher Career Grant, as well as Chamber Music America’s 2024 Cleveland Quartet Award. With more than 70 concerts per season, recent highlights include the Balourdet’s debuts at Carnegie and Wigmore Halls, and new string quartets by composers Karim Al-Zand, Paul Novak, and Nicky Sohn through grants from Chamber Music America (2021) and the Barlow Foundation (2023). They are currently the Graduate Quartet in Residence at the prestigious Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University and are recent graduates of the New England Conservatory’s Professional String Quartet Program. 

Highlights of the 2024-25 season include performances at the Chamber Music Society of Detroit, the Kennedy Center, What Makes it Great at Merkin Hall, and a weeklong residency at Stanford University. Recently, they have performed at La Jolla Music Society, Rockport Chamber Music Festival, Northwestern University Winter Chamber Music Festival, and Chamber Music Houston. Collaborations include pianists Marc-André Hamelin, Simone Dinnerstein, Stewart Goodyear, Albert Cano Smit, cellist Astrid Schween, and violist Jordan Bak. During this season, they continue their position as String Quartet in Residence with the Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle in North Carolina where they curate the Up Close Chamber Music Series, serve as principals in the orchestra, and engage with the larger community of the Triangle region. 

Committed to sharing their musical values with the next generation, the quartet has served regularly as faculty at the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival, JDR Summer Music Academy, Berkshire Summer Music, and Opus Chamber Music. They have also given masterclasses and coachings at Northwestern University, University of Michigan, Rice University, Emory University, New England Conservatory Preparatory Department, Fischoff Chamber Music Academy, Upper Valley Chamber Music, and Wright State University. 

The Balourdet journey began in 2018 in the mountains of New Mexico at the Taos School of Music, where violinists Justin DeFilippis, Angela Bae, and cellist Russell Houston first bonded as friends over long evenings of chamber music, luxurious Peppermint Schnapps and extravagant meals created by chef extraordinaire Antoine Balourdet, a renaissance man with an exceptional love of life and music. It was the friendships, a shared passion for music and food, and gratitude for the role the festival played in the formation of the quartet, that inspired the members to name the ensemble in Chef Balourdet’s honor. 

Soon thereafter, in the heat of a waning Texas summer, Justin, Angela, and Russell joined with violist Benjamin Zannoni at Rice University, and the Balourdet Quartet was formed. Inspired by their love for the repertoire and the excitement of having found each other, the four friends found themselves playing quartets late into the night for fun. After having been together for only one year at Rice University, and a summer at the Aspen Music Festival, they took second prize at the Nielsen International String Quartet Competition, and were selected as the only quartet admitted to Boston’s historic New England Conservatory Professional String Quartet Program under the tutelage of Cleveland Quartet cellist Paul Katz.

In 2021, the Quartet won the Grand Prize at New York’s Concert Artists Guild Competition, which included joint management by Concert Artists Guild in the U.S., and Young Classical Artist’s Trust (YCAT) in the UK and Europe. In addition, the Balourdet has been prizewinners in Canada’s Banff International String Quartet Competition, the International Premio Paolo Borciani Competition in Italy, Gold Medal winners at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, and Gold Medal and Audience Prizewinners at the Yellow Springs Competition.

RUTH OCHS

DR. RUTH OCHS is a conductor, scholar, and educator based in central New Jersey. Cultivating a unique mix of depth and accessibility, she puts into action her strong belief that students, performers and audiences, alike, benefit from a closer understanding of the materials and makers of a musical composition. Driven by an energizing awe for music’s everyday impact in the world, she shares her time with academic, concert, and community endeavors. As the director of the Princeton University Sinfonia, a co-curricular campus orchestra, Dr. Ochs leads the ensemble in a wide variety of repertory, including regularly premiering new works by Princeton University undergraduate composers and featuring student soloists. She has also worked with the Princeton University Orchestra in many contexts, including leading its 2019 concert tour of Spain. With Princeton student musicians, she has music directed fully-staged performances of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and Die Gärtnerin aus Liebe. In the classroom at Princeton she teaches on a variety of music history and performance topics, and, as a scholar,she has presented on the work of women composers, including Fanny Hensel, Amy Beach, and Florence Price.

Enthusiastic about nourishing and inspiring musicians of all ages and aspirations, Dr. Ochs shares her time with a variety of community-based musical initiatives. She is now in her twentieth season as conductor of the Westminster Community Orchestra. With this dedicated group of musicians, she has led successful family concerts, opera gala performances, and performances with soloists and ensembles from the Westminster Conservatory of Music and Westminster Choir College. The orchestra’s annual holiday sing-along raises significant donations for Mercer County, New Jersey food pantries. In the spring of 2025, she is co-leading and mentoring the Trenton Youth Orchestra, an ensemble that partners high school musicians from the Trenton, New Jersey area with Princeton University student musicians.

Her outreach initiatives and work with students has been recognized in a variety of ways. In 2019, she received the Princeton University Pace Center for Civic Engagement’s Community Engagement Award, and she was voted an honorary member of Princeton University’s Class of 2023. She holds degrees in music, orchestral conducting, and music history, from Harvard University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Princeton University, respectively. As a Fulbright Scholar, she studied musicology at Humboldt Universität in Berlin, Germany, and, as a student of the Polish language, she studied at the Uniwersytet Jagielloński in Kraków, Poland. She is currently Senior Lecturer in Princeton University’s Department of Music.