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Brandeis drops out of Lydian String Quartet

Brandeis drops out of Lydian String Quartet

“A dismissal like this is just shocking and disheartening,” violist Mark Berger told the Globe in a Zoom interview.

In an email to the Globe, Brandeis Associate Vice President for Public Affairs Julie Jett said the university is committed to “a strong focus on teaching and access to research” and “has to make difficult decisions from time to time related to other activities” to support this mission, but declined to comment specifically on the string quartet or the art.

Lyon, who recently moved from Chicago to take a position at Brandeis, said it feels “very corporate and not very transparent.” She said Christensen had just introduced her at a reception for new teachers, “and three weeks later I was called into the office and told that my contract had not been renewed.”

“People are very upset,” Brandeis music department head Yu-Hui Chang said in a telephone interview. “I hope there is another path that is sustainable and fair to Lydian musicians.”

According to the Justice article, Christensen explained at the Oct. 18 meeting that cutting Lydian faculty positions would save the university approximately $275,000 a year.

Brandeis, founded in 1948 by the American Jewish community, faces ongoing financial difficulties due to decrease in recruitment. In May, the university announced it would cut 60 positions, mostly staff and administrative, and President Ronald Liebowitz said he would resign. November 1 following a faculty vote of no confidence in September that included criticism of his handling of budget deficits and fundraising. Arthur E. Levin is set to take over as interim president after Liebowitz leaves.

The quartet was formed specifically to exist at Brandeis and was added to the faculty after winning prizes in several international competitions, Berger said. Over the years, the band has released more than two dozen commercial recordings, hiring replacement musicians as needed over the years while maintaining the Lydian name.

Violinist Julia Glenn, a Boston native who joined the quartet in 2022, replacing founding violinist Judith Eisenberg, said that without the quartet, the music department would be reduced by 25% and “that would leave those who remain with a truly impossible task.”

Brandeis has historically used its cultural heritage, including relationship with Leonard Bernsteinto promote yourself. At the same time, the university has occasionally cut resources devoted to the arts when it has faced financial problems in the past. In the context of the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, the university planned to close the Museum of Rose Art and sell his collection, but this decision was postponed after three museum caretakers filed a lawsuit in state court. In the summer of 2023, also citing financial reasons, Brandeis made his opinion known. doctoral programs in music at halftime, where they remain.

Glenn said she was encouraged by the support the quartet received “very loudly” at this faculty meeting. Chang, the department chair, said several people inside and outside the university have reached out to her to offer support and ask how they can help further.

In an email to the Globe, violist and MIT professor Marcus A. Thompson praised the quartet for “rolling up their sleeves and doing a real ‘university job’ of teaching in school and beyond…it’s more than just decoration.” “

By eliminating the quartet, “the institution has radically diminished itself,” wrote Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Harbison in an emailed letter to the Globe. “If rescue is not possible, I hope someone will write a chronicle, a posthumous exploration of the great artistic adventure that Brandeis was and is no longer.”


AZ Madonna can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @knitandlisten.