Bryn Mawr College Performing Arts Series closes with Zorá String Quartet, Saturday, March 24
“...utterly fantastic..." —Strad Magazine
"...melting sound and affecting impetuosity..." —New York Times
Zorá means "sunrise" in Bulgarian, perfectly suited to the rich sound and wistful beauty of this ensemble. The program features Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15 in A Minor, written by the composer after a long, nearly fatal illness. Also included is Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor, Op. 13, one of his most passionate works, paying homage to Beethoven while taking the cyclic organization of the master’s late quartets into radically new directions.
Zorá String Quartet, currently serving as the Curtis Institute of Music Graduate Quartet in Residence, will visit Bryn Mawr College after completing the Leonard Bernstein Centenary Celebration U.S. Tour on March 18, 2018.
“We are delighted to close our season with the Zorá String Quartet, talented young musicians who offer inspired and insightful interpretations,” said Lisa Kraus, curator of Bryn Mawr College Performing Arts Series.
Event Schedule and Ticket Information
Zorá String Quartet
Saturday, March 24, 8 p.m.
Great Hall
Great Hall (in Old Library) is located at the center of the Bryn Mawr College campus at 101 N. Merion Avenue in Bryn Mawr, PA. Tickets are $20, $18 for seniors, $10 for students, and $5 for children under 12. Flex subscriptions of five tickets are $90 each, $75 for seniors. Tickets, subscriptions, and group sales are available online through Brown Paper Tickets, at https://www.brynmawr.edu/performing-arts-series or by calling 610-526-5210.
About Zorá String Quartet
Zorá String Quartet is in its second season as Graduate Quartet in Residence at the Curtis Institute of Music, where they work closely with Shmuel Ashkenasi, Arnold Steinhardt, Pamela Frank, Steven Tenenbom, Peter Wiley and Mia Chung. Some of their most influential mentors include the Pacifica Quartet, Atar Arad, Kevork Mardirossian, Eric Kim, and Grigory Kalinovsky. The Quartet debuted with Curtis on Tour in 2016-2017, giving recitals in New York and Washington, D.C. on the Young Concert Artists Series, and performing throughout the United States. In the 2017-2018 season, the ensemble continues to tour the U.S., performing with clarinetist David Shifrin and tenor Dominic Armstrong, having debuted at London’s Wigmore Hall and Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and performed with violist Roberto Díaz and cellist Peter Wiley on the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society series.
Zorá was named the Grand Prize and Gold Medal Winner of the 42nd Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition; first prize and several concert prizes at the 2015 Young Concert Artists International Auditions; and the Coleman National Chamber Music Competition. In 2016 the quartet participated in the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Encounters program, concluding with a performance at Alice Tully Hall, and appeared at Chamber Music Northwest and the Oregon Music Festival. The group has also participated in chamber music residencies at the Banff Centre (Canada); in the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival (Connecticut); and in the Advanced Quartet Studies program of the Aspen Music Festival, where they worked intensively with Earl Carlyss, the Takács Quartet, the Pacifica Quartet, and the American String Quartet. Zorá String Quartet also performed in master classes for London Haydn Quartet, Keith Robinson, Koichiro Harada, members of Cleveland Quartet, The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma and Noah Bendix-Balgley.
Zorá String Quartet violinists Dechopol Kowintaweewat and Hsuan-Hao Hsu, violist Pablo Muñoz Salido, and cellist Zizai Ning hold graduate degrees in performance and chamber music from the Jacobs School of Music in Indiana University and were part of the Jacobs School of Music’s prestigious Chamber Music Performer’s Diploma from 2014-16. Zorá String Quartet aspire to educate individual students, serve as a mentor for collegiate-level string quartets of Indiana University, and initiate active outreach projects in Bloomington to introduce new audiences to chamber music. Zorá String Quartet has worked with Reimagining Opera For Kids (ROK) and performs in the Wylie House Museum, Waldron Arts Center, and the Art Museum of IU Bloomington to bridge the gap better with the local community. In 2017, through Curtis Institute of Music's Community Artist Program (CAP), the Zorá collaborated with the music teacher at the Vare-Washington School, a K-8 school in South Philadelphia, to create a string quartet program.
The name “Zorá" was chosen by Bulgarian professor Kevork Mardirossian; it means "sunrise" in Bulgarian.
About Bryn Mawr College Performing Arts Series
Since 1984 the Bryn Mawr College Performing Arts Series has presented great artists and performances to Philadelphia-area audiences, creating an environment in which the value of the arts is recognized and celebrated. Providing talks and workshops free to the public to develop arts awareness and literacy, the Bryn Mawr College Performing Arts Series has partnered in recent seasons with such organizations as the Barnes Foundation, Pennsylvania Ballet, Bryn Mawr Film Institute, and FringeArts. The Series has presented performances by such diverse luminaries as Trisha Brown Dance Company, Meredith Monk, John Waters, Jennifer Koh, the Khmer Arts Ensemble of Cambodia, and Urban Bush Women.
The 2017-2018 Bryn Mawr College Performing Arts Series receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
Press Note
For further event coverage coordination, please contact Phil Sumpter, Freelance Publicist, at psumpter.studios@gmail.com or 215.287.1179.
For further institutional information, please contact the Office for the Arts at reservations@brynmawr.edu or 610-526-5210, or visit www.brynmawr.edu/arts.