Harlem Quartet

Last updated April 06, 2019

Harlem Quartet is a string quartet that was originally composed of first-place laureates of the Sphinx Competition for Black and Latino string players. They were formed in 2006. The members are first violinist Ilmar Gavilán, second violinist Melissa White, violist Jaime Amador, and cellist Felix Umansky. The Quartet won Best Instrumental Composition at the 2013 Grammy Awards for Mozart Goes Dancing.

A string quartet is a musical ensemble consisting of four string players – two violin players, a viola player and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group. The string quartet is one of the most prominent chamber ensembles in classical music, with most major composers, from the mid 18th century onwards, writing string quartets.

The Sphinx Organization is a non-profit organization dedicated to the development of young Black and Latino classical musicians. Based in Detroit, Michigan, it was founded by the American violinist Aaron Dworkin. The Sphinx was chosen to represent this organization because of what it symbolizes: "the power, wisdom and persistence" that the organization hopes to instill in its participants.

The violin, sometimes known as a fiddle, is a wooden string instrument in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and highest-pitched instrument in the family in regular use. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino piccolo and the kit violin, but these are virtually unused. The violin typically has four strings tuned in perfect fifths, and is most commonly played by drawing a bow across its strings, though it can also be played by plucking the strings with the fingers (pizzicato) and by striking the strings with the wooden side of the bow.

Career

2006–2008: Career Beginnings and Take the "A" Train

The Harlem Quartet debuted at Carnegie Hall in the fall of 2006 at the Sphinx Organization's 10th anniversary gala concert,^[1] and played there again in late January 2007 as participants in Arts Presenters' prestigious and highly competitive Young Performers Career Advancement (YPCA) program ^[2] as well as in October 2008 with the Cleveland Quartet's cellist Paul Katz at the annual Sphinx gala.^[3] They have returned to Carnegie on numerous other occasions. In 2006 it made its debut at Harlem's legendary Apollo Theatre with a well-received performance of Wynton Marsalis's At the Octoroon Balls. In collaboration with cellist Carter Brey, it performed in December 2008 at the Library of Congress in a concert including Schubert's Cello Quintet which employed the Library's matched collection of Stradivari instruments. The Harlem Quartet has been featured on WNBC, CNN, the Today Show, WQXR-FM, and the Art Beat section of the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer website. In 2007 White Pine Music issued the quartet's first CD, Take the "A" Train, a release that was featured in the November issue of Strings magazine that year.

Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park.

The Cleveland Quartet is a string quartet founded in 1969 by violinist Donald Weilerstein, at the time an instructor at the Cleveland Institute of Music, whose director Victor Babin had secured funding for an in-resident quartet to be headed by Weilerstein. Weilerstein formed the group that summer at the Marlboro Music School and Festival with violinist Peter Salaff, violist Martha Strongin Katz, and cellist Paul Katz. The group was initially called the "New Cleveland Quartet." In 1971, the group left the Cleveland Institute because of disagreements over teaching loads and took up residency at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York; they dropped the word "New" from their name at this time. In 1976 they made their final change of residency, moving to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York.

The Apollo Theatre is a Grade II listed West End theatre, on Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster, in central London. Designed by the architect Lewin Sharp for owner Henry Lowenfeld, it became the fourth legitimate theatre to be constructed on the street when it opened its doors on 21 February 1901, with the American musical comedy The Belle of Bohemia.

2009−2011: Paul Chihara: "Love Music" and greater success

The quartet opened its 2009−10 season returning as featured soloists on the national Sphinx Chamber Orchestra Tour, making thirteen stops coast-to-coast including Carnegie Hall, Eastman School of Music, Oberlin College, and Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. In December it played two performances at the White House for guests of President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, and made an appearance Christmas morning on NBC's Today Show. In 2009 the quartet also performed by invitation with Itzhak Perlman at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and made its London debut performing at the residence of the US ambassador to the UK. Throughout the season the quartet will collaborate with seasoned artists such as Carter Brey, Yehuda Hanani and Paul Freeman and the Chicago Sinfonietta, performing Mozart's "Sinfonia Concertante", Brahms's "Double Concerto", and Michael Abels's "Delights & Dances" for solo string quartet and orchestra. Its second CD, featuring works of Walter Piston, was released in 2010 by Naxos. On a third recording by the quartet Eternal Evolution they collaborated with pianist Awadagin Pratt to showcase works by Judith Lang Zaimont.

In the summer of 2008, as participants in The Perlman Music Program, the quartet members worked daily with such master musicians as Itzhak Perlman, Donald Weilerstein, Paul Katz, and Roger Tapping. The quartet spent two week at Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in June 2009, performing and giving master classes, and has been invited to return for the 2010 festival. The Quartet started touring around this time.

Itzhak Perlman is an Israeli-American violinist, conductor, and music teacher. Over the course of his career, Perlman has performed worldwide, and throughout the United States, in venues that have included a State Dinner at the White House honoring Queen Elizabeth II, and at the Presidential Inauguration of President Obama, and he has conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and the Westchester Philharmonic. In 2015, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Donald Weilerstein is an American violinist and pedagogue. In 1969, he founded the Cleveland Quartet, becoming its first violinist, a position he held until 1989. Since 2004, he is the Dorothy Richard Starling Chair in Violin Studies at New England Conservatory and since 2001, he is a faculty member at the Juilliard School. His students have won first prize in the Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition and first prize in the Indianapolis International Violin Competition. In addition, he is a member of the Weilerstein Trio with his daughter, Alisa Weilerstein, and wife, Vivian Hornik Weilerstein.

2012−present: Delights & Dances success and touring

In 2012 the quartet start touring performing in the US and UK. They also are featured on Delights & Dances with Mei-Ann Chen and Chicago Sinfonietta released on 28 May 2013. The Quartet won Best Instrumental Composition at the 2013 Grammy Awards for Mozart Goes Dancing. In 2012, former cellist Paul Wiancko and former violist Juan Miguel Hernandez both left to pursue other careers. In replacing Wiancko, White and Gavilán decided to no longer categorize the quartet by colour (Zalkind is a non-Hispanic Anglo). Edgers, Geoff (18 November 2012). "Despite woes, Harlem Quartet still plays on". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 20 May 2015.

Mei-Ann Chen is a Taiwanese American conductor. She is currently music director of the Chicago Sinfonietta and conductor laureate of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra.

Paul Wiancko is an American cellist and composer.

Harlem Quartet along with Chick Corea and Gary Burton, recorded the album titled “Hot House.” The ensemble is set to continue their “Hot House Tour” in Japan in June 2014.

Accomplishments

Discography

Take the 'A' Train (White Pine) (2007)
Paul Chihara: Love Music (2011)
Delights & Dances (2013)

Awards

Grammys

2013	"Mozart Goes Dancing"	Won

External links

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References

↑ Music in Review; Sphinx Chamber Orchestra, New York Times, October 27, 2006.
↑ Young, Black, and Latino in a Concert for Diversity, New York Times, September 27, 2007.
↑ Rite of Strings, for Black and Latino Youth, New York Times, October 22, 2008.

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[1] Music in Review; Sphinx Chamber Orchestra, New York Times, October 27, 2006.

[2] Young, Black, and Latino in a Concert for Diversity, New York Times, September 27, 2007.

[3] Rite of Strings, for Black and Latino Youth, New York Times, October 22, 2008.