Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers, with one performer to a part. However, by convention, it usually does not include solo instrument performances.
In classical music, a piano quintet is a work of chamber music written for piano and four other instruments, most commonly a string quartet. The term also refers to the group of musicians that plays a piano quintet. The genre flourished during the nineteenth century.
A piano quartet is a chamber music composition for piano and three other instruments, or a musical ensemble comprising such instruments. Those other instruments are usually a string trio consisting of a violin, viola and cello.
The Guarneri Quartet was an American string quartet founded in 1964 at the Marlboro Music School and Festival. It was admired for its rich, warm, complex tone and its bold, dramatic interpretations of the quartet literature, with a particular affinity for the works of Beethoven and Bartók. Through teaching at Harpur College, University of Maryland, Curtis Institute of Music, and at Marlboro, the Guarneri players helped nurture interest in quartet playing for a generation of young musicians. The group's extensive touring and recording activities, coupled with its outreach efforts to engage audiences, contributed to the rapid growth in the popularity of chamber music during the 1970s and 1980s. The quartet is notable for its longevity: the group performed for 45 years with only one personnel change, when cellist David Soyer retired in 2001 and was replaced by his student Peter Wiley. The Guarneri Quartet disbanded in 2009.
Ivan Božičević is a Croatian composer, pianist, organist and jazz musician.
Musica Viva, also known as Musica Viva Australia, is a national organisation in Australia dedicated to chamber music.
The London String Quartet was a string quartet founded in London in 1908 which remained one of the leading English chamber groups into the 1930s, and made several well-known recordings.
Music Mountain Summer Chamber Music Festival, located on Music Mountain Road in Falls Village, Connecticut, is America's oldest continuing summer chamber music festival. Founded in 1930, it is currently in its 94th season.
Richard Henry Walthew, often known as Richard H. Walthew was an English composer and pianist, and an important figure in English chamber music during the first half of the 20th century.
Graham Waterhouse is an English composer and cellist who specializes in chamber music. He has composed a cello concerto, Three Pieces for Solo Cello and Variations for Cello Solo for his own instrument, and string quartets and compositions that juxtapose a quartet with a solo instrument, including Piccolo Quintet, Bassoon Quintet and the piano quintet Rhapsodie Macabre. He has set poetry for speaking voice and cello, such as Der Handschuh, and has written song cycles. His compositions reflect the individual capacity and character of players and instruments, from the piccolo to the contrabassoon.
The Concord String Quartet was an American string quartet established in 1971. The members of the quartet were Mark Sokol and Andrew Jennings, violins; John Kochánowski, viola; Norman Fischer, cello. They gave their last regular concert on May 15, 1987. An anniversary concert was given in December 1996 at the Naumburg Foundation.
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.
David Finckel is an American cellist and influential figure in the classical music world. The cellist for the Emerson String Quartet from 1979 to 2013, Finckel is currently the co-artistic director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York, co-founder of the independent record label ArtistLed, co-artistic director and co-founder of Music@Menlo in Silicon Valley, producer of Cello Talks, professor of cello at The Juilliard School, and visiting professor of music at Stony Brook University.
The Missouri Chamber Music Festival and Adult Chamber Music Intensive (ACMI) was founded in 2010. The goal of the MOCM Festival concerts is to present the fine art of small ensemble music to a wide audience through an accessible, community-based festival. The ACMI workshop is the educational portion of the festival, placing adult instrumentalists in chamber ensembles with Festival artists for coaching and performance.
The Kutcher String Quartet was founded by its first violinist, Samuel Kutcher (1898-1984), who had by 1922 established himself as an accomplished solo artist and the previous year been a member of the Philharmonic String Quartet, playing second violin, along with Frederick Holding, E. Thomlinson (viola) and Giovanni Barbirolli (cello).
Kevin Kwan Loucks is a Korean–American classical pianist, arts entrepreneur, and nonprofit executive. In September 2021, he was appointed chief executive officer of Chamber Music America in New York City. He previously served as Director of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships at the Philharmonic Society of Orange County, a presenting organization in residence at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, CA, and also served as Director of Innovation and Program Development at Music Academy of the West in Montecito, California. He co-founded Chamber Music | OC, an arts organization headquartered in Lake Forest, California, and is a founding member and current pianist of the award-winning piano trio, Trio Céleste.
William Sergeant Kendall, was an American painter, most famous for his evocative scenes of domestic life; his wife Margaret Stickney Kendall and three young daughters were frequent subjects in his early work.
Susan Spain-Dunk FRAM was an English composer, conductor and violinist/violist.
Christine Herter Kendall was an American painter.
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.
