MUSIC

AvantGarden and Chiara String Quartet present The Chiara String Quartet Classical in a Club "Beethoven in Bars," Saturday, October 31, 2009 at 6:30PM. Special early show.

Playing "Chamber Music in Any Chamber," the Chiara Quartet reaches from the concert hall into clubs, bars and galleries, expanding the places to hear live classical music while returning chamber music to its roots in intimate spaces. The Chiara String Quartet are bringing a whole lot of Beethoven to you! They will pair movements from Beethoven quartets with newer music from today's hottest young, next-generation composers Thierry Tiedrow, Lauren Loiacono and Matthew Ricketts.

Playing "Chamber Music in Any Chamber," the Chiara String Quartet (Rebecca Fischer, Julie Yoon violin; Jonah Sirota, viola; Gregory Beaver, cello) reaches from the concert hall into clubs, bars and galleries, expanding the places to hear live classical music while returning chamber music to its roots in intimate spaces. Described by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as "vastly talented, vastly resourceful, and vastly committed to the music of their time," the Chiara is also continually finding new meaning within pieces from the well-established quartet canon. Their performances have been described as "luminous," "searing," (New York Times) "soulful," "biting," and possessing a "potent collective force" (Strings Magazine).

The Chiara Quartet are Blodgett Artists-in-Residence at Harvard University, in addition to their ongoing artist residency at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Awarded the Guarneri Quartet Residency Award for artistic excellence by Chamber Music America, the Quartet's other honors include a top prize at the Paolo Borciani International Competition, winning the Astral Artistic Services National Audition, and winning First Prize at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition.

Alongside performances in major concert halls such as Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, Philadelphia's Kimmel Center, and Harris Hall at the Aspen Music Festival, the Chiara devotes a portion of its performance season to concerts in non-classical venues including Galapagos Art Space in New York, The Tractor Tavern in Seattle, Avant Garden in Houston, and the Hideout in Chicago, among many others. Recent highlights of the Chiara Quartet's international performances include the American Academy in Rome, a critically-acclaimed eight-city tour of Sweden with clarinetist Håkan Rosengren, and a performance of Steve Reich's Different Trains in Munich at the storied Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität.

The 2009-2010 season is the first year in the Chiara Quartet's two-year Beethoven cycle, during which they will perform all sixteen of Beethoven's string quartets in Cambridge and Northampton, MA and Lincoln, NE. In keeping with their commitment to bring classical music to uncommon places, the quartet will perform "Beethoven in Bars" at clubs throughout the country, featuring Beethoven's music with new works by young composers Thierry Tiedrow, Lauren Loiacono and Matthew Ricketts. The Chiara Quartet will also make its debut at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; at the Philadelphia Museum of Art presented by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; and on the new Subway Series, a concert series that takes the Chiara to three of New York City's boroughs. Additional performances will take the Quartet across the country, for performances in states including Kansas, Nebraska, North Carolina, Maryland, Texas, and Connecticut.

Recent collaborators of the Chiara Quartet include Joel Krosnick, Roger Tapping, Todd Palmer, Simone Dinnerstein, Norman Fischer, and Paul Katz, as well as members of the Orion, Ying, Cavani, and Pacifica Quartets. The ensemble has premiered works by Gabriela Lena Frank, Jefferson Friedman, Michael Wittgraf, Randall Snyder, and Nico Muhly, among others.

The Chiara discography includes the Mozart and Brahms clarinet quintets with Håkan Rosengren for SMS Classical, and the world premiere recordings of Robert Sirota's Triptych and Gabriela Lena Frank's Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout for the Quartet's own New Voice Singles label. In 2007 the Chiara recorded Jefferson Friedman's Second and Third Quartets, and they are currently at work recording the complete string quartets of Brahms for SMS Classical.

The Chiara Quartet has been artists-in-residence at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln since 2005. In the summer, they are in residence at Greenwood Music Camp as well as the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Chamber Music Institute. The Chiara trained and taught at The Juilliard School, mentoring for two years with the Juilliard Quartet, as recipients of the Lisa Arnhold Quartet Residency from 2003-2005.

Chiara (key-ARE-uh) is an Italian word, meaning "clear, pure, or light." More information about the Chiara Quartet can be found online at www.chiaraquartet.net,  on MySpace at www.myspace.com/chiarastringquartet  and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/chiarastringquartet.