The Emerson String Quartet, also known as the Emerson Quartet, was an American string quartet initially formed as a student group at the Juilliard School in 1976. It was named for American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson and began touring professionally in 1976. The ensemble taught in residence at The Hartt School in the 1980s and is currently the quartet in residence at Stony Brook University. Both of the founding violinists studied with Oscar Shumsky at Juilliard, and the two alternated as first and second violinists for the group. The Emerson Quartet was one of the first such ensembles with the two violinists alternating chairs.
John Harris Harbison is an American composer and academic.
Menahem Pressler was a German-born Israeli-American pianist and academic teacher. He was known for his work with the Beaux Arts Trio that he co-founded in 1955, playing until its dissolution in 2008, in hundreds of recordings and thousands of concerts. He taught at Indiana University Bloomington. His playing was described as focused on elegance, delicacy and clarity.
Mario Davidovsky was an Argentine-American composer. Born in Argentina, he emigrated in 1960 to the United States, where he lived for the remainder of his life. He is best known for his series of compositions called Synchronisms, which in live performance incorporate both acoustic instruments and electroacoustic sounds played from a tape.
Kim Kashkashian is an American violist. She has spent her career in the U.S. and Europe and collaborated with many major contemporary composers. In 2013 she won a Grammy Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo. She is recognized as one of the world's top violists.
Steven Edward Stucky was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer.
Meriwether Lewis Spratlan Jr. was an American music academic and composer of contemporary classical music.
James Zuill Bailey, better known as Zuill Bailey is an American Grammy Award-winning cello soloist, chamber musician, and artistic director. A graduate of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University and the Juilliard School, he has appeared in recital and with major orchestras internationally. He is a professor of cello and Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Texas at El Paso. Bailey’s extensive recording catalogue are released on TELARC, Avie, Steinway and Sons, Octave, Delos, Albany, Sono Luminus, Naxos, Azica, Concord, EuroArts, ASV, Oxingale and Zenph Studios.
Bruce Adolphe is a composer, music scholar, the author of several books on music, and pianist. He is currently Resident Lecturer and Director of Family Concerts of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, where he has been a key figure since 1992. Adolphe performs his weekly "Piano Puzzler" segment on the nationally broadcast Performance Today classical music radio program hosted by Fred Child. "Piano Puzzler" was on National Public Radio starting in 2002, and is now on American Public Media. The program is also available as a podcast and from iTunes. Mr. Adolphe was also founding artistic director of Off the Hook Arts Festival, an interdisciplinary festival combining music, science, and visual arts, based in Fort Collins, Colorado, from 2010 to 2022.
Margaret Brouwer is an American composer and composition teacher. She founded the Blue Streak Ensemble chamber music group.
Martin Boykan was an American composer known for his chamber music as well as music for larger ensembles.
Bernard Greenhouse was an American cellist and one of the founding members of the Beaux Arts Trio.
For the composer born with this name, see Isidore de Lara
The Pascal Quartet was a French string quartet musical ensemble which took shape during the early 1940s and emerged after World War II to become a leading representative of the French performance tradition. It was named after its founder, the viola player Léon Pascal, and was occasionally termed the Leon Pascal Quartet.
Daniel Guilet was a French, and later, American, classical violinist, best known for being a founding member of the Beaux Arts Trio.
Antônio Meneses was a Brazilian cellist and academic teacher. After Meneses won the first prize and gold medal at the 1982 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, he performed as a soloist with orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, and London Symphony Orchestra and with conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Kurt Sanderling, and Herbert von Karajan. He was the cellist of the Beaux Arts Trio from 1998 to 2008 and collaborated in recital with pianists such as Nelson Freire and Maria João Pires. He taught at the Bern Academy of Arts. The Strad wrote that he "was one of the most acclaimed soloists and chamber musicians of his generation".
Chamber Music Detroit, formerly the Chamber Music Society of Detroit, was founded in 1944 and is the tenth oldest chamber music series in the United States as recognized by Chamber Music America. It is widely respected as metropolitan Detroit's anchor organization for chamber music.
The Ébène Quartet is a French string quartet based in Boulogne-Billancourt, France.
The Lark Quartet was a New York-based, all female string quartet that operated from 1985 to 2019. It is acknowledged for its distinguished contribution to the string quartet repertoire, commissioning new works from some of America's most celebrated composers. Most notably, Aaron Jay Kernis' two string quartets: Quartet no. 1 Musica celestis and Quartet no. 2 Musica instrumentalis, which received the Pulitzer Prize in 1998. The Lark Quartet served as Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Massachusetts Amherst from 2004 to 2008 and has recorded numerous albums on multiple labels including Decca/Argo, Arabesque, Bridge, ERI, Endeavor and Koch.
