ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE, THE COLORADO STRING QUARTET, WILL PERFORM AT BARD COLLEGE ON TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—The Colorado Quartet will give their first concert as artists-in-residence at Bard College on Tuesday, September 19. The performance, presented by The Bard Center, is free and open to the public and begins at 8:00 p.m. in Olin Hall.

The Colorado Quartet will perform Mozart's Quartet in B-flat Major, K. 589; Mendelssohn's Quartet in E Minor, Op. 44, No. 2; and Laura Kaminsky's Transformations for String Quartet, which was commissioned by the Colorado Quartet with support from the Serage Foundation. The Kaminsky work had its premiere in June at the Soundfest Chamber Music Festival on Cape Cod, which is administered by the Colorado Quartet. "We found that Laura Kaminsky’s music speaks with a rare freshness and honesty," says Quartet founder and second violinist Deborah Redding. "Kaminsky's directness of expression led to moments of great drama and true pathos that resulted in a very satisfying and refreshing musical experience."

"We are thrilled to be associated with Bard College because of both the high level of the student body and the world-class music faculty," said cellist Diane Chaplin. "We are looking forward to a lot of in-depth work not only with performers, but also with the composition department and the larger Bard community, and we hope that our wealth of experience and enthusiasm will benefit the entire college."

The Quartet has just begun their residency for the 2000-2001 academic year, which enables Bard students to study throughout the school year in private lessons with the quartet’s individual members—Julie Rosenfeld, violin; Deborah Redding, violin; Marka Gustavsson, viola; and Diane Chaplin, cello—as well as with all of the members for quartet and other chamber music coaching. The quartet will also conduct seminars on a variety of musical topics, from those with specific quartet applications to subjects of a more universal nature.

ABOUT THE COLORADO QUARTET

At the forefront of the international music scene since winning both the Naumburg Chamber Music Award and first prize at the Banff International String Quartet Competition in 1983, the Colorado Quartet enjoys a reputation for combining musical integrity, impassioned playing, and lyrical finesse. Currently based in the New York City area, the Colorado Quartet appears regularly in major halls around the globe; concerts in the 1999–2000 season took them to Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, and Houston. Highlights of past years include tours of more than twenty countries, and regular appearances at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. The quartet plays often in New York, appearing at the Mostly Mozart Festival, where they performed twenty Haydn quartets over a two-year period, as well as in concerts on the Great Performers at Lincoln Center series and in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. In 1995 the Colorado Quartet celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of Béla Bartók’s death with the first complete performance of the Bartók String Quartets to take place in Philadelphia.

The quartet has been featured on radio and television worldwide, with numerous radio broadcasts in the United States, England, and Canada and television programs in The Netherlands, Norway, Puerto Rico, Peru, and Mexico. Recent appearances in the United States include National Public Radio’s St. Paul Sunday and "Penn and Teller’s Sin City Spectacular," seen on the FX television channel. The ensemble’s critically acclaimed CDs include an album of contemporary compositions on Albany Records and, on Parnassus Records, Brahms's quartets and Schubert’s "Death and the Maiden" with the Mendelssohn F minor Quartet. The Colorado Quartet’s recording, Chamber Music of Henry Cowell, on the Mode label, appeared on the 1999 Top Five list in Gramophone Magazine.

The Colorado Quartet is equally at home performing standard literature or newer works and has premiered compositions by leading composers such as Ezra Laderman and Karel Husa, as well as composers of the younger generation. The quartet has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, and the Lila Wallace–Reader’s Digest Foundation.

The members of the Colorado Quartet are known as inspiring and well-respected teachers and have held residencies at the Oberlin College Conservatory, Philadelphia’s New School of Music, and the Banff Centre in Canada. They have also given master classes at the Eastman School of Music, Northwestern University, Indiana University, and Cleveland Institute of Music. Quartet members are artistic directors of the Soundfest Chamber Music Festival and Quartet Institute in Falmouth, Massachusetts, a two-week festival held on Cape Cod in June that features young quartets from around the world.

ABOUT THE MEMBERS OF THE COLORADO QUARTET

JULIE ROSENFELD, violin: A native of Los Angeles, Ms. Rosenfeld received her training at the Curtis Institute of Music, University of Southern California, and Yale University; her teachers have included Szymon Goldberg, Nathan Milstein, and Yukiko Kamei. Ms. Rosenfeld has appeared as recitalist and soloist with orchestras throughout the United States and Europe and has recorded two albums of French chamber music with Andre Previn. A member of the Colorado Quartet since 1982, she performs often with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and at the Santa Fe and La Jolla Music Festivals. In 1992 she was the first female judge at the Banff International String Quartet competition, and in 1996 she was artist-in-residence at the Marlboro Music Festival and the International Mozart Festival in Poland.

DEBORAH REDDING, violin: Born in New York City, Ms. Redding grew up in Colorado and founded the quartet while a student at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She holds a bachelor of music degree from that institution, where she studied with Oswald Lehnert, and a Master of Music degree from the Juilliard School, where she was a student of Szymon Goldberg. Ms. Redding has taught at the Adamant Chamber Music Workshop and lectured at the European Mozart Academy in Poland. A serious marathoner, she now runs ultramarathons at distances of 50 to 100 miles to raise scholarship money for the Soundfest Quartet Institute.

MARKA GUSTAVSSON, viola: Ms. Gustavsson received her bachelor’s degree with high distinction from Indiana University as a student of Joseph Gingold. She has appeared in the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society’s "Meet the Music" series, in Avery Fisher Hall and Boston’s Symphony Hall with the Brandenburg Ensemble, and as a member of the featured string quartet in the ABC documentary "Passion to Play." Internationally, she has performed in the Festival Présence de Ligeti in Paris, for the Queen of the Netherlands in Holland, and at Toru Takemitsu’s memorial concert at Oji Hall in Tokyo. Ms. Gustavsson has worked with composers such as Martin Bresnick, Tan Dun, John Halle, and Henri Dutilleux and has served on the faculties of Hofstra University, as a member of the Hofstra String Quartet, and the Kinhaven Music Festival, in Weston, Vermont.

DIANE CHAPLIN, cello: A native of Los Angeles, Ms. Chaplin holds a bachelor of fine arts degree from the California Institute of the Arts, where she was a student of Cesare Pascarella, and a master of music degree from the Juilliard School, where she studied with Harvey Shapiro. She received a special prize from the International Cello Competition in Vin;a del Mar, Chile, and a certificate from the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. She has concertized throughout the United States and Europe. Ms. Chaplin teaches a large class of private students in New York City and is administrative director of the Soundfest Chamber Music Festival and Quartet Institute. She has performed several times with Mikhail Baryshnikov and often appears as "Katerina Karamazov" with the Flying Karamazov Brothers. She has been a member of the Colorado Quartet since 1988.

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This event was last updated on 03-02-2001

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