FQ DONOR SPOTLIGHT: JOHN GARRAN

The Journey with Flinders Quartet

The first time my wife Irene and I heard Flinders was at a Musica Viva festival at Domain Chandon in the Yarra Valley. The quartet had only been formed for about two years at the time. Playing with the Goldner Quartet they delivered a beautiful performance of the Mendelssohn Octet. I decided then that this was a quartet with a future and made a point to make contact with the then-first violinist Erica Kennedy and Zoe Knighton. Initially, our support was non-financial. I wrote the quartet’s newsletter for some time. The relationship developed over time and I was honoured sometime later to be invited onto the quartet’s “Sounding Board”, the precursor to the current board. We encouraged the quartet to bring their subscription series to Sydney, something that presented a particular challenge in Sydney’s chamber music scene in the early noughties. Audience development proved extremely difficult and eventually, the experiment was abandoned, although not before attracting two or three valuable financial supporters.

It was a wonderful experience to follow the quartet’s development through residencies at Banff and Prussia Cove, participation in an early MICMC, and to see them invited into the London String Quartet Competition, the only time there have been two Australian quartets involved. (The other was the equally wonderful Tankstream Quartet.)

I had been suggesting for some time that the quartet needed a “calling card” such as a drive-time focussed CD. In 2008 the quartet were invited to play at Musica Viva’s Huntington Estate Music Festival. One festival evening we enjoyed dinner with the quartet. I left the table to get more cheese and biscuits. When I got back I discovered that Irene had committed us to fund the production of said CD. This, our first significant donation to Flinders resulted in the production of the wonderful “Reinventions”, a CD of real beauty, which the ABC eventually picked up and reissued on their own label. They continue to this day to play excerpts on Classic FM.

Flinders’ many collaborations with other Australian musicians always lent special meaning to their performances. It was what led us to dip our toes in the wonderful world of commissioning. Our first experience resulted in Ian Munro’s String Quartet No 2. More recently we had the pleasure of commissioning a work by Melody Eötvös for Flinders and mezzo Ashlyn Tymms which was included as part of the 2022 season.

It continues to be a joy to be part of the Flinders family and to consider the quartet as our friends. As the quartet moves through another re-birth with a new first violinist we can only reinforce to any potential supporter: this quartet is a valuable part of Australia’s musical culture, providing so much more than just fine performance with the encouragement of young quartets and composers in the development of the string quartet genre from which they draw their strength.

— John Garran