Jennifer Kloetzel
// Cellist & Founding Member, Cypress String QuartetCYPRESS STRING QUARTET are a classical chamber music ensemble from San Francisco, California. With an extensive national and international touring schedule, they perform throughout the United States, Mexico, Canada, England, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Japan. Cypress String Quartet’s Call and Response program has partnered with the Fetzer Institute to take a closer look at the Love of Music, offering participants a deep dive into the emotions created by music. The Cypress String Quartet members have degrees from many of the world’s finest conservatories, including The Juilliard School, Guildhall School of Music & Drama and the Royal College of Music (London), The Cleveland Institute of Music, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Website: www.cypressquartet.com
Photo: Gregory Goode
Interview:
Music is powerful and can be transformative, for both performers and audience members. I have experienced this from both sides. I began playing the cello when I was six years old; I heard my first cello when I was five and was completely taken with the lovely, rich sound. I begged for a year to play it, and my parents finally gave in. Cello has been a huge part of my life since then, and I decided to make a career playing music. In 1996 I moved to San Francisco to found the Cypress String Quartet, and that is how I make my living and my life. Playing music is an act of devotion. How it feels to play changes daily, but it is a discipline, and so I commit to do the work. Pushing through the difficult times, the times when it is “too hard” or when someone doesn’t “like” what I’ve done is a vital part of the process of making music from a deep and truthful place. I know in those times that I am working to bring something greater than my own self into the world. When I play music, I am transported to a new place. There is love in that—love of music, love of sound, love of ideas. There is also forgiveness—there has to be. Performing can be difficult, and there is a lot of “self-forgiveness” in performance, when I must be in the moment, on the stage, letting go of perfection. Forgiving myself for being “human.”
Sharing music is an act of love. Putting yourself, your thoughts, your feelings, where you are in that particular moment out there on stage for people to hear, see, and comment on, is filled with a kind of trust and also a kind of truth. In that sharing, there is an experience for audience members to have, if they are open to it. Sitting in a concert hall allows us the space to reflect and feel. I see this in almost every performance I give, and I feel it when I attend performances myself. Often the quartet is fortunate enough to receive direct feedback from audience members, as was the case when we received a beautiful letter from a woman in Sitka, Alaska. She wrote to us how much our Beethoven performance meant to her, and what a privilege it was to be in the audience. Then she shared what happened to her during the concert: “I was somehow transcended into (Beethoven’s) sorrow… I’ve never experienced this kind of emotional response during twenty-eight years of attending performances… [your performance] quite unexpectedly allowed me to grieve [for the death of a family member] in a healing sort of way, through Beethoven’s gift of music, and your fabulous talents.”
It is rewarding and inspiring to help people connect to their own personal experiences in music, and reading a reaction such as this restores my faith in the value of my work and of the place of music in the world.
“Music is powerful and can be transformative, for both performers and audience members.”
– Jennifer Kloetzel, Cellist & Founding Member, Cypress String Quartet
