Recognized for its virtuosity, exuberant performance style, and often daring repertory choices, the Pacifica Quartet has carved out a critically lauded musical path.  Recent career honors include appointment as quartet-in-residence at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the position held for 43 years by the Guarneri Quartet.  In 2009 the Pacifica was named 2009 Ensemble of the Year by Musical America and received the 2009 Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance.

The Pacifica Quartet tours extensively throughout the United States and performs in the world’s major concert halls in cities such as London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Vienna, and Tokyo.  Each season the ensemble can be heard on many of the nation’s most prominent radio broadcasts, including Chicago’s WFMT, Boston’s WGBH, New York’s WNYC, and American Public Media’s Performance Today and St. Paul Sunday.  Having given highly acclaimed performances of the complete Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Elliott Carter string quartets in recent seasons, the Quartet is preparing the monumental Shostakovich quartet cycle for performance in Chicago and New York during the 2010-2011 season.  In 2011-2012, the Pacifica will take the Shostakovich cycle to London’s Wigmore Hall and will also present the complete Beethoven cycle at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

An ardent advocate of contemporary music, the Pacifica commissions and performs as many as eight new works a year and has championed American composer Elliott Carter’s five string quartets in single-concert performances on prestigious stages in the U.S., Europe, and Japan.  These groundbreaking concerts, which the Pacifica pioneered in 2002, are still unique in the chamber music world.  In 2008 the Pacifica released its Grammy Award-winning CD recording of Carter’s quartets Nos. 1and 5 on the Naxos label, and its 2009 release of Carter’s quartets Nos. 2, 3, & 4 completed the two-CD set.  The Pacifica’s other CD recordings, including Mendelssohn’s complete string quartets and Declarations: Music Between the Wars, have also attracted praise from critics in the U.S and abroad.

Formed in 1994, the Pacifica Quartet quickly won chamber music’s top competitions, including the 1998 Naumburg Chamber Music Award.  In 2002 the ensemble was honored with Chamber Music America’s Cleveland Quartet Award and appointment to The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s CMS Two program for gifted young musicians.  In 2006 the Pacifica was awarded a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, only the second chamber music ensemble to be so honored in the Grant’s long history.

The members of the Pacifica Quartet live in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, where they were appointed to the faculty of the University of Illinois in 2004 and serve as Faculty Quartet in Residence.  In addition to their recent appointment as quartet-in-residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Pacifica Quartet members also serve as resident performing artists at the University of Chicago and the Longy School of Music in Boston.

For more information about the Pacifica Quartet, please visit: www.pacificaquartet.com