Meanwhile, behind the scenes, then-Deputy Provost Peter Conn was helping Music Professor Christopher Hasty launch a program of subsidized private music lessons in Penn’s residential college houses. Hasty also secured a residency with the Manhattan-based Cassatt String Quartet, an outstanding young ensemble named for the American impressionist painter, Mary Cassatt [“Gazetteer,” September/October 2001]. The residency included performances and coachings, and was to continue for four full seasons—the first two funded through an undesignated gifted by Yew Lin Goh W’79 and the final two through a gift from Andrea Mitchell CW’67. (In May, Mitchell renewed funding to support the Cassatt Quartet’s residency.)

“The Cassatts were a huge help to me,” reminisces Armstrong, now the box office manager and assistant director of admissions of the Marlboro Music Festival as well as a Philadelphia-based freelance journalist. “One of my favorite memories was when we were playing the Shostakovich Piano Trio—a tricky composition—and sweating hard. During the scherzo, the cellist, Caroline Stinson, said, ‘Don’t take it so seriously. It’s sarcastic; it’s funny. Make sure we know that.’ We learned to play the scherzo so that it could make people laugh at Shostakovich’s jokes, while at the same time understanding the very intense, moving passages in the piece.”

Armstrong was in many ways the quintessential Penn undergraduate: multitalented, he excelled equally in academics, sports, and music throughout high school. He came to Penn as an English major and music minor, but it was not until he began focusing on chamber music during that fateful summer of his freshman year that he understood the depth of his passion for music. Through Music 10, he went on to take private cello lessons with Jeffrey Solow at the Esther Boyer School of Music at Temple University, and through Music 11 he studied chamber music intensively, both with the Cassatts and with David Yang.

When Armstrong graduated from Penn he considered furthering his cello studies at a conservatory, but soon came to accept that the best way for him to enjoy music was on his own time. “To me, the most satisfying concert I can put on is to invite some friends over, cook some food and open some wine, and play Brahms for the people who matter to me. Being able to play for friends and family, and bringing people together satisfies me more than anything else,” he says.

“At some level, the Penn students are more hungry than your typical conservatory student,” observes Cassatt violinist Muneko Otani. “When we arrived on campus, it was clear that they were not used to having access to professional chamber musicians. We went into theory and music history classes and performed for them some of the repertoire they were studying. We led orchestra sectionals; we were stand-partners with the students during orchestra. And we did a lot of recitals—for example, a program of all women composers for Women’s History Month. Best of all was the chance to work with living composers. Professor Jay Reise wrote a quartet for us, and we performed it for his advanced students. They got to watch us communicating with him, trying to make sure we understood his ideas, and figuring out the best way to get those ideas into the notations for future performers. It was very exciting for us and for the students to see us being part of the creative process.”