VIDEO: Butterflies for Stephanie on first local string quartet date

Yet she will be nervous as heck for her next gig, at the White Church in Ansdell.

The butterflies will be because Stephanie is a local girl, born just around the corner and a former pupil at Ansdell primary school.

She is part of Jubilee, a successful string quartet headlining the St Annes Music and Arts Festival on September 12.

“This will be the first time I’ve played locally since I started in the quartet. In fact I don’t think I’ve given a concert at home since I was about 11 or 12 so I am really excited,” she said.

“It will be a nice opportunity for my grandad to hear me play but I think I will be pretty nervous, not least because my mum has already told half of Ansdell about it!

“But I think it will be a nice kind of nerves because I know I’ll have so many friendly faces supporting me.”

It’s probably no surprise Stephanie, 25, has ended up a musician – mum Heather is a violin teacher and gives lessons around the area.

Stephanie was five when she got her first violin. She went to Chetham’s in Manchester aged 11 and later to the Royal Academy of Music in London. It was there she was paired with three other girls – Tereza Privratska, Alanna Tonetti-Tieppo and Lauren Steel – and formed Jubilee.

“We perform a lot but to make it to the top, which is what we want to do, you have to work incredibly hard,” she said.

“So as well as giving concerts in the UK and Europe, we go to Madrid and Basel in Switzerland six times a year and have intense week-long lessons with two teachers who are both in famous quartets.

“The aim is to make a career from it so we can support ourselves, do some really high profile performances and hopefully one day be signed to a label and release CDs.”

Sounds like a dream life but wait till you hear Stephanie’s average day.

“We practise for hours,” she said. “Today, for instance, we’re rehearsing 11am to 5pm, but we’ll do at least an hour’s practice before that and then a bit more later in the evening.

“It’s certainly not a case of just turning up and, hey presto, we can suddenly play together. We work through everything really slowly and a lot of people aren’t willing to give up so much of their time to do it. You have to make a lot of sacrifices.”

In short you don’t get to be the best unless you put the work in, which, as a teenager, can’t always have been easy.

“I did have a momentary crisis when I was about 15,” she recalls. “I suddenly thought ‘I’ll be a lawyer instead’. That lasted for about five minutes, then I realised I didn’t have the brains so I stuck with music instead!”

Four females spending so much time together. There must be rows? “We’ve had our moments but we get on so well that things are forgotten straight away,” Stephanie added.

These girls are fantastic are what they do and are undoubtedly the highlight of the St Annes week-long festival.

To get tickets, priced £10, or for further details call (01253) 788579.

* The video was recorded LIVE at the Weimar International Chamber Music Competition, November 2012.

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