Four musicians from Ohio are packing their bags in August and traveling more than 2,000 miles to join the SF State music department as students, teachers, and performers.

The Hausmann Quartet won at the sixth annual Yehudi Menuhin Chamber Music Festival on Jan. 25, where they were awarded a year-long fellowship at SF State under the guidance of the professional musicians that make up the Alexander String Quartet.

The Morrison Fellowship prize is sponsored by SF State's International Center for the Arts and the May Treat Morrison Trust.

"I'm looking forward to working with them," said Alexander String Quartet violist Paul Yarbrough. "They're wonderful young musicians."

The Hausmann Quartet consists of violinists Bram Goldstein and Isaac Aleen, violist Angela Choong, and cellist Yuan Zhang. The group formed in 2004 in New Jersey, and has since moved to Ohio to further their career as a quartet. The quartet won at the music festival based on multiple performances, master classes and workshops.

"We have an extraordinary caliber of groups who look at this opportunity and may decide to give it their all," said Alexander String Quartet cellist Alexander Walsh-Wilson. "To try to come and engage in this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to live for one year in one of the most exciting chamber music communities with one of the world's leading string quartets as mentors."

Of the two finalists that performed in January, the Alexander String Quartet felt the Hausmann Quartet was best suited for the fellowship.

"We were really happy to be chosen," said Hausmann Quartet second violinist Bram Goldstein. "It was great to know we were even a worthy candidate for the fellowship, let alone the winners."

The Hausmann Quartet will spend a lot of their fellowship at SF State working closely with the Alexander String Quartet, who will offer guidance both artistically and on the business side of being musicians. The quartet will learn grant-writing and recording skills.

"Making a career as a string quartet is not just being good musicians,
it's running a small business," Yarbrough said.

The quartet is also expected to share their expertise with young musicians as part of their fellowship. They will be reaching out to SF State music students and community organizations to teach lessons.

"The fellowship provides real-world experience, and the quartet will be expected to be able to communicate with people of all backgrounds and ages," Yarbrough said.

The Hausmann Quartet will take the place of this academic year's quartet in residence, the Afiara Quartet. "We knew we had big shoes to fill when picking the successor [to the Afiara Quartet]," said Yarbrough.

The Hausmann Quartet's fellowship will begin and Sep. 1 and continue until August 2010. "I'm looking forward to getting the opportunity to get out there and do everything a professional quartet does," Goldstein said.