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Pacifica Quartet 2011/12 Season
Recognized for its virtuosity, exuberant performance style, and often-daring repertory choices, the Grammy Award-winning Pacifica Quartet tours extensively throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Named Musical America’s 2009 Ensemble of the Year, the Quartet has gained international stature as one of the finest chamber ensembles performing today. Shortly after its 1994 formation in California, the Pacifica Quartet won top prizes in the music world’s most prestigious competitions, including the 1998 Naumburg Prize. The Quartet has since received many honors, including being named the quartet-in-residence at Indiana University’s Jacob School of Music in March 2012 and being appointed quartet-in-residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2009 – 2012), a position previously held by the Guarneri String Quartet.
In 2006 the Pacifica was awarded a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, becoming only the second chamber ensemble so honored in the Grant’s long history. Also in 2006 the Quartet was featured on the cover of Gramophone and heralded as one of “five new quartets you should know about,” the only American quartet to make the list. Having given highly acclaimed performances of the complete Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Carter string quartets in recent seasons (the last called “brilliant” and “astounding” by The New York Times), the Quartet presented the monumental Shostakovich cycle in Chicago and New York during the 2010-2011 season. In the summer of 2011, the Quartet presented the complete Beethoven cycle at Tokyo’s famous Suntory Hall, in an unprecedented presentation of five concerts in three days. And in 2011-2012, the Quartet will take the Shostakovich cycle to London’s Wigmore Hall and will also perform the complete Beethoven cycle at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and for the Denver Friends of Chamber Music.
The members of the Pacifica Quartet currently live in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, where they were appointed to the faculty of the University of Illinois in 2003 and will serve as quartet-in-residence through May 2012, at which point they will relocate to Bloomington, IN. In addition to their position as quartet-in-residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Pacifica Quartet also serves as resident performing artist at the University of Chicago.
For more information, please visit www.pacificaquartet.com.
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