COLORADO QUARTET WILL PERFORM CONCERT AT BARD COLLEGE ON WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28 Program features works by Beethoven, Husa, and Brahms

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.-The Colorado Quartet, artists-in-residence at Bard College, will perform a concert at Bard on Wednesday, November 28, at 8:00 p.m. The performance, presented by The Bard Center, will be held in Olin Hall and is free and open to the public.

The program includes Ludwig van Beethoven's Quartet in D Major, Op. 18, No. 3; Karel Husa's Quartet No. 4 ("Poems"); and Johannes Brahms's Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 67. "We are especially happy to be playing Karel Husa's Quartet in honor of his 80th birthday this year," says violinist Julie Rosenfeld. "This incredibly powerful work was written for us in 1990, in commemoration of the 'Velvet Revolution' in Husa's native Czechoslovakia. The six uninterrupted movements--that have poetic titles such as 'Light,' 'Hope,' and 'Freedom'--are quite evocative and moving. We recorded this quartet and have played it many times since we premiered it in Brno in 1991, and are looking forward to introducing it to the Bard community."

The Quartet's residency at the College enables Bard students to study privately with the group's individual members--Julie Rosenfeld, violin; Deborah Redding, violin; Marka Gustavsson, viola; and Diane Chaplin, cello--as well as with the ensemble as a whole for both quartet and other chamber music coaching. The quartet also conducts seminars on a variety of musical topics, from those with specific quartet applications to subjects of a more universal nature.

"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," says Chaplin. "We enjoy in-depth work not only with performers, but also with the composition department and the larger Bard community, and hope that our wealth of experience and enthusiasm will benefit the entire college."

The concert is made possible, in part, through the generosity of the Homeland Foundation and the Leon Levy Foundation at Bard College. For further information about the program, call The Bard Center at 845-758-7425.

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 20 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 it performed 20 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 50th anniversary of Béla Bartók's death by giving Philadelphia its first complete performance of the Bartók string quartets.

The quartet has been featured on radio and television worldwide. 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, a CD of Brahms's quartets, and another of Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" and the Mendelssohn F-minor Quartet, which received the 2001 CMA/WQXR Record Award. A recording titled 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 and newer works. It has premiered compositions by such leading composers 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. They 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 founders and artistic directors of the Soundfest Chamber Music Festival and Quartet Institute, a two-week festival held each June in Falmouth, Massachusetts; the festival celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2001.

Julie Rosenfeld, violin: A native of Los Angeles, 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. 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 André 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, 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. 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: 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 at 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. Gustavsson has worked with such composers as Martin Bresnick, Tan Dun, John Halle, and Henri Dutilleux. She has served on the faculties of Hofstra University and of the Kinhaven Music Festival, in Weston, Vermont.

Diane Chaplin, cello: A native of Los Angeles, 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 Viña del Mar, Chile, and a certificate from the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. She has performed throughout the United States and Europe. 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.

(9.21.01)

[Note to editors: Photographs are available, in slide or electronic form, by request. Call 845-758-7512 or e-mail [email protected] for information.]

This event was last updated on 11-06-2001

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