Auden RovelleQuartz (violin and viola)
John Choi (violin and viola)

• Findings published in the July 2003 journal Neuropsychological show that children with training in music have better verbal memory skills than do their peers who haven't received musical instruction.
  
• A comprehensive series of skill tests were run on 5,154 fifth graders in all 75 of the Albuquerque, NM elementary schools. In EVERY SINGLE TEST AREA, kids who were learning to play a musical instrument received higher marks than their classmates. And, the longer the school children had been in the instrumental programs, the higher they scored.
• Demographic data from SAT test takers show that the national average scores are significantly higher among students who undergo musical training as compared to those who do not.
• A study at Florida State University (1990) showed 71% of administrators surveyed stated that Art courses had a positive influence on student's decisions to stay in school and that over 50% of the students surveyed stated that the participation in Arts courses positively influenced their decision to remain in school.
• A recent Rockefeller Foundation Study discovered that music majors have the highest rate of admittance to medical schools, followed by biochemistry and the humanities.
• The U.S. Department of Labor issued a report in 1991 urging schools to teach for the future workplace. The skills they recommend (working in teams, communication, self-esteem, creative thinking, imagination, and invention) are exactly those learned in school music and arts programs.
• From USA TODAY, January 19, 1987: "Musical training can be a big help in getting to the top of business and politics, according to most congressmen and Chief Executive Officers of Fortune 500 companies. Ninety percent of more than 1,000 CEO's and congressmen interviewed said playing a musical instrument as a child helped them develop "character and leadership skills."
• New York Schools show that 90% of their students who participate in music go on to college."

The RovelleQuartz studio is located in the Fine Arts Building. The building is a National Historic Landmark, and has been an artist's colony for over a century. At 410 S. Michigan Ave, it is one of Chicago's oldest buildings and is devoted to diverse art-forms. The 10-story structure symbolizes a transition of South Michigan Avenue from a commercial and residential street to an artistic and cultural center. This wonderful building is full of discoveries - - - lots of marble and high ceilings, and plenty of fine fine art. It is a historically significant building that has become a haven for classically trained musicians/teachers, artists, architects, theater groups and dance troupes. In addition to being a national landmark, it is also a City Historic Landmark and houses the Studebaker and Playhouse theaters. The Fine Arts Building, a historic artist's haven since 1898, continues to draw local inspiration. Over fifty artists have recently flocked to one of the few remaining Chicago buildings designed specifically for working artists.

Get on the funky old elevator with a real live elevator operator. Stop and get off at any floor and you are very likely here the sound of a piano or a violin. The interior features gorgeous Art Nouveau motifs and murals dating from the 1898 renovation. True to its name, it houses artist's lofts, art galleries, theatre, dance and recording studios, interior design firms, musical instrument makers, and other businesses associated with the arts. There are murals in unexpeced places and the whole place is just suffused with the spirit of the artist. There are music studios, dance studios, art studios, metaphysicians, etc. Indeed, the Fine Arts has some 200 tenants. Mostly artists and specialists in musical instruments, they give the building a rarified ambience, typified by the hand operated elevators (one of the operators, Tom Durkin, has been doing that job for 56 years) and the profusion of murals, stained glass and historic furniture that fills the hallways. Many of the building's myriad studios - - which were holding acting classes as early as 1900 - - can and do house salons and other small performances.

The National Landmark's motto, "All passes - Art alone endures" permeates the halls. Bronze cast elevator doors and ornate clocks are among the building's original features. Murals painted by resident artists in the early twentieth century still circle the tenth floor atrium. A Venetian courtyard garden can be viewed from many artist's studios and accessed through the Fine Arts Building Gallery in Suite 433. Publishers and artists have used its spaces; today the principal tenants are professional musicians. Take a look at the handsome exterior details then step inside to see the marble and woodwork in the lobby. The motto engraved in the marble as you enter says, all passes -- art alone endures. The building has an interior courtyard, across which strains of piano music and soprano voices compete with tenors as they run through exercises and arias. There's also a gallery on the fourth floor (open Wednesday-Sunday from noon to 6). David Swan, an architect with offices in the Fine Arts and a knowledgeable source able to wax lyrical on the building's storied history of rehearsals, classes and performances, calls the forging of the Fine Arts in 1898 from carriage showroom "the greatest retrofit of the 19th century anywhere in the world."