Renowned for bringing fresh excitement to traditional string quartet repertoire as well as for its insightful interpretations of new music, the Chiara String Quartet captivates audiences throughout the country. During 2011-2012, the Chiara is celebrating twelve seasons of playing together. The Quartet serves as Blodgett Artists-in-Residence at Harvard University, where it recently completed a complete cycle of the Beethoven quartets. Honors include a top prize at the Paolo Borciani International Competition, winning the Astral Artistic Services National Audition, and First Prize at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. Awarded the Guarneri Quartet Residency for artistic excellence by Chamber Music America, the Chiara Quartet has also been the recipient of grants from Meet The Composer, The Aaron Copland Foundation and the Amphion Foundation. The Chiara Quartet has performed in national venues such as Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the National Gallery in Washington DC, and Harris Hall at the Aspen Music Festival. The ensemble also devotes a portion of its performance season to concerts in non-classical venues including (le) Poisson Rouge and Galapagos Art Space in New York, The Tractor Tavern in Seattle, Avant Garden in Houston, and the Hideout in Chicago. 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. Described by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as “vastly talented, vastly resourceful, and vastly committed to the music of their time,” the Chiara has commissioned and premiered new works since its inception. In the 2010-11 season the Chiara embarked upon a large-scale project in four cities called Creator/Curator, commissioning new works for string quartet by composers Nico Muhly, Huang Ruo, Daniel Ott and Gabriela Lena Frank.Each composer curated the concert on which his/her piece was premiered, choosing music that complemented and gave context.The Chiara has also commissioned works from Jefferson Friedman, Robert Sirota, Michael Wittgraf, and Carl Voss, among others.
