Fifth-year senior Mitchell Drury stands upright with his violin resting on his shoulder. He zeroes in on a sheet of music and begins playing the notes, carefully gliding his bow across the violin’s strings. His teacher, MU violin and chamber music professor Eva Szekely, hums to her student’s rhythmic tranquility. “The note before is the one you want to emphasize. Sustain without rushing,” Szekely instructs her intrepid pupil. “That’s beautiful.” Drury plays a work by renowned nineteenth-century violinist/composer Niccolò Paganini, one of Szekely’s favorite composers.

Szekely joined MU’s faculty in 1976. What has kept her at the university, more than anything else, is the Esterhàzy Quartet, a world-class chamber string ensemble that has been in residence at MU’s School of Music for three decades. "The Esterhàzy Quartet is a big part of the reason that the School of Music at the University of Missouri is such a special place," Szekely says, "and it's certainly the main reason that I have been here as long as I have."