Husband and wife team Ida Kavafian and Steven Tenenbom run two businesses.

One of their businesses involves making music and touring the country with a quartet, while their other involves breeding dogs.

As unrelated as these two activities sound, the two musicians found a way to use their breeding business to benefit their quartet.

“When [our dogs] get registered with the American Kennel Club, they have to have a formal name,” Kavafian said. “We wanted a musical name for our dogs, so we decided on Opus One. That means that whenever we breed a dog, [Opus One] has to be a part of that name.

“We made such a nice reputation for ourselves in that area. When we were trying to think of a name for the group, we weren’t coming up with much, and everybody liked Opus One, so we just used it.”

The few audiences who have gotten a chance to listen to Opus One during their barely yearlong existence have been intrigued not only with the group’s name, but with their sound as well.

The quartet (violinist Kavafian, violist Tenenbom, cellist Peter Wiley and pianist Anne-Marie McDermott) made their debut at Washington D.C.’s Library of Congress in October of 1998, and since then, Opus One have been contracted to play in culturally abundant cities such as New York, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia — and Ames.

With a roster that boasts some of the brightest stars in chamber music, such a favorable response was not a huge surprise.

“I played with Peter Wiley in the Beaux Arts Trio,” Kavafian explained. “Steven is a member of the Orion String Quartet, and Ann Marie plays a lot of solo gigs.”

Kavafian said she and Tenenbom didn’t hold auditions when they decided to start the group but relied on contacts they had established in the music world. Three of the musicians teach at the Curtis Institute for Music in Philadelphia, and three are members of the Chamber Society at Lincoln Center.

“[Peter and I] resigned from the Beaux Arts Trio at the same time,” Kavafian remembered. “We enjoyed playing together, so we decided to make a piano quartet and agreed that our very favorite pianist in the world was Anne Marie.”

Although Opus One has the makings of just another regular piano quartet, considering their standard repertoire and list of familiar talents, there’s one difference that separates the group from other emerging quartets.

While many new groups make it a priority to record an album and book a tour as soon as possible, the members of Opus One claim they have a different agenda.

“We’re four people who could do anything we wanted but chose to do this because we enjoy it,” she said. “Mostly, we just love playing together and how fun it is for us to work together and be together. That kind of joy has a direct line toward the audience.”

And if the quartet doesn’t work out, there’s always dog breeding.