Classical youth will be served April 28, 2002 By Wynne Delacoma Classicla Music Critic The classical music world pursues the fountain of youth with the passion of Ponce de Leon. While we're wringing our hands, many young musicians are quietly forging viable careers in unexpected corners of classical music. Like entrepreneurs undaunted by gloomy financial reports or marketing surveys, they have decided to work most emphatically for themselves by forming small chamber groups and figuring out how to survive playing the kind of music they love. The two highest-profile routes to a career as a performing musician--joining a symphony orchestra or making a name as a soloist--are more brutally competitive than ever. Some talented young musicians are deciding to try something completely different, forming chamber ensembles that also do extensive outreach programs and long-term teaching residencies as well as traditional performances. Musicians have always formed chamber groups, of course, and today's illustrious veterans--among them the Juilliard String Quartet, now in its sixth decade, and the Emerson String Quartet, currently celebrating its 25th anniversary--were once eager young newcomers. (The Kronos Quartet may seem to be forever young but passed its 25th anniversary mark in 1998.) What's striking today is the steady stream of young ensembles that are forging ahead, undaunted by a shaky economy and ongoing concerns about classical music's future that make the always-iffy prospects of a performing career even more uncertain. Chicago is home base for two of the best of them, the Pacifica Quartet, a string quartet founded in 1994, and eighth blackbird, a contemporary music ensemble. Both are half-time resident ensembles at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago, an unusual co-operative arrangement that gives them financial stability and, more importantly, artistic flexibility. Members of both are young, good-looking, ambitious, energetic and fearsomely talented. Specializing in contemporary music, eighth blackbird is in a field with relatively fluid boundaries. Pacifica, winner of the prestigious Naumburg Chamber Music Award in 1998, has plunged into much more tradition-bound territory. I caught up with the Pacifica--violinists Simin Ganatra and Sibbi Bernhardsson, violist Masumi Per Rostad and cellist Brandon Vamos--early this year at a Beethoven quartet class they teach on NU's Evanston campus. Ganatra and Vamos, who are married, are the only remaining founding members. Bernhardsson, their long-time friend and a native of Iceland, joined two years ago and Masumi, who performed frequently with Bernhardsson, joined last year. (Vamos is the son of Almita and Roland Vamos, well-known string teachers in the Midwest currently on NU's Music School faculty.) "I was aware that the Pacifica was one of the hottest fledgling string quartets around,'' said Bernard Dobroski, dean of NU"s Music School, who set up the ensemble's part-time residency at NU in 2000. After two years of half-time residency at U. of C., they were considering leaving Chicago for a full-time residency elsewhere."What seemed right for us was to have a young, more adventuresome quartet [in residence] as models and teachers, one that was closer in age to our students.'' NU has approximately 120 string instrument majors. The easy rapport between the Pacifica players, whose ages range from 24 to 32, and the two dozen NU students in their Beethoven quartet class is obvious on this early February evening. Listening to student ensembles work their way through movements of two Beethoven quartets in Regenstein Hall's chilly recital theater, Ganatra was electrically charged. Slim with long dark hair and flashing eyes, she often reached for her violin to demonstrate a point. Her male colleagues were more low-key but just as intensely involved. "If you play in that faster tempo,'' said Vamos, sitting in the recital hall's front row and setting the tempo with snapping fingers, "you have to be sure to breathe.'' "Surprise your colleagues here,'' Ganatra said later in the lesson, as the students tried a complex passage one more time. "This is where she usually scares us,'' added Vamos, prompting rueful smiles from Bernhardsson and Rostad. Ganatra began dreaming about forming a string quartet as a high-school music student in Los Angeles. "I was always looking for people,'' she said, "and Brandon and I started playing together at summer music festivals. We were young,'' she added, speaking from the ancient perspective of age 29. Vamos also dreamed about a chamber music career. "But I didn't think it would ever be a possibility,'' he said. "I didn't know how to go about it. When we started the quartet I had just finished grad school. You're in a position where you have to make up your mind what you want to do with your career. Either you're going to do orchestra auditions or look for a teaching position or get your doctorate. But my favorite thing about music always was playing chamber music.'' In the beginning, the new quartet rehearsed six to eight hours a day while "living off our credit cards,'' said Ganatra. They also spent hours on the phone trying to line up concerts. Winning the Concert Artists Guild Competition in 1997 and the Naumburg in 1998 put them on the map. "Different quartets do it different ways,'' said Ganatra. "If a quartet has connections, you can get a career without the competitions. We didn't, so we did the competition route.'' The Pacifica tours regularly, from week-long residencies in Boise, Idaho to single concerts in cities from New York to Tulsa, Okla. They routinely do programs in schools and have fond memories of a concert in a Los Angeles juvenile detention home for an audience of young violent offenders. "We came in and did last movement of the Bartok No. 5,'' said Ganatra. mentioning one of chamber music's most fiercely violent string quartets. "I think that threw them for a loop.'' "They were expecting elevator music,'' said Vamos, "which is most people's idea of classical music.'' Such outreach work is a routine part of the career plan these days. "What's required of young ensembles now is totally different from what was required five or 10 years ago,'' said Marna Seltzer, who books artists for the University of Chicago Presents professional concert series. "It used to be that if you were a young Guarneri quartet, you would just go out on the circuit and start playing. Now you need to do educational activities, you need to write program notes. You need to do pre-concert lectures, you need to talk from the stage. It's a totally accepted part of the package now.'' "People are saying that classical music is dying,'' said Bernhards-son. "But you go to a place like Joplin, Mo., and they have a huge chamber music series.''