It was magic from the start.
The musicians who would come to form the Abeo Quartet were first-year students at the Juilliard School when, in 2018, they first played together in a string quartet. From the very first notes, they knew they had something special.
“In our first reading sessions, there was instant chemistry, and immediately we knew that this was meant to be,” said James Kang, violist with the Abeo Quartet.
In the six years since its founding, the Abeo Quartet has garnered accolades at prestigious competitions, including the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, the Yellow Springs Chamber Music Competition and the Chesapeake International Chamber Music Competition. The group has performed at noted chamber music festivals around the world, including Norway’s Vertavo Festival, Music@Menlo and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. And in 2021 the Abeo became the inaugural graduate string quartet-in-residence at the University of Delaware, working under the tutelage of the acclaimed Calidore String Quartet.
But before the musicians could launch their quartet, they needed to come up with a name for the group.
“We wanted something that was meaningful and that spoke to what we believe as musicians and how we feel when we play, and primarily that is joy,” said Njioma Grevious, a violinist with the Abeo Quartet.
Searching for a name for the quartet, Grevious, whose first name is Nigerian, gained inspiration from alphabetical lists of Nigerian names.
“One of the first names that showed up is Abeo, which means ‘bringing joy’ in a Nigerian dialect. And it just kind of clicked, and that’s what we stuck with,” Grevious said.
Naming the quartet was much like naming a baby – and for good reason.
“We refer to this quartet as our baby,” Kang said. “It’s been our project and our life for the past six years now, and I can’t imagine my life without it. We have poured so much into it, so many emotions.”
The Abeo has also weathered two personnel changes. Kang and Grevious are the quartet’s two remaining founding members, and violinist Rebecca Benjamin and cellist Macintyre Taback joined the group more recently.
The personnel changes inspired the Abeo members to expand themselves as musicians.
“You challenge your own musicality, and we challenge the way we’re used to doing things,” Grevious said. “So it’s a fun challenge, for sure.”
The Abeo Quartet is now a rising star with a mission to perform the standard string quartet repertoire and works by underrepresented composers, including composers of color and women. The 19th-century composer Fanny Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in E-flat is a chamber music gem but is often eclipsed by works by male composers. The Abeo Quartet recently performed the first movement of Fanny Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in WOSU Public Media’s Performance Studio.
Today, the musicians face the challenge of developing the Abeo Quartet’s career while living hundreds of miles apart. Three of the quartet’s members are students in doctoral programs in Houston, Boston and Evanston, Illinois. Grevious shuttles between Washington, D.C., and New York City, and this season finds herself traveling frequently to perform as winner of the senior division of the 2023 Sphinx Competition.
The miles and full schedules could squeeze out time for rehearsing with the quartet. But Kang says the long-distance setup is temporary and that the musicians plan to move closer to each other once they’ve finished their doctoral coursework.
For now, the quartet will continue to meet up about every two weeks to rehearse for performances that, at present, include concerts at the Kennedy Center and on Seattle’s Emerald City Music series, among others.
“We all prioritized the quartet and are thankful to have many concerts, and we continue to rehearse as we can,” Kang said. “And it’s just such a joy to be able to continue with this.”
