Yo-Yo Ma is an American cellist. Born in Paris to Chinese parents and educated in New York City, he was a child prodigy, performing from the age of four and a half. He graduated from the Juilliard School and Harvard University, and has performed as a soloist with orchestras around the world. He has recorded more than 90 albums and received 19 Grammy Awards.
The Arditti Quartet is a string quartet founded in 1974 and led by the British violinist Irvine Arditti. The quartet is a globally recognized promoter of contemporary classical music and has a reputation for having a very wide repertoire. They first became known taking into their repertoire technically challenging pieces. Over the years, there have been personnel changes but Irvine Arditti is still at the helm, leading the group. The repertoire of the group is mostly music from the last 50 years with a strong emphasis on living composers. Their aim from the beginning has been to collaborate with composers during the rehearsal process. However, unlike some other groups, it is loyal to music of a classical vein and avoids cross-genre music. The Quartet has performed in major concert halls and cultural festivals all over the world and has the longest discography of any group of its type. In 1999, it won the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize for lifetime achievement, being the first and only group to date to receive this award.
The Juilliard String Quartet is a classical music string quartet founded in 1946 at the Juilliard School in New York by William Schuman. Since its inception, it has been the quartet-in-residence at the Juilliard School.
The Kronos Quartet is an American string quartet based in San Francisco. It has been in existence with a rotating membership of musicians for almost 50 years. The quartet covers a very broad range of musical genres, including contemporary classical music. More than 900 works have been written for it.
Evan Ziporyn is an American composer of post-minimalist music with a cross-cultural orientation, drawing equally from classical music, avant-garde, various world music traditions, and jazz. Ziporyn has composed for a wide range of ensembles, including symphony orchestras, wind ensembles, many types of chamber groups, and solo works, sometimes involving electronics. Balinese gamelan, for which he has composed numerous works, has compositions. He is known for his solo performances on clarinet and bass clarinet; additionally, Ziporyn plays gender wayang and other Balinese instruments, saxophones, piano & keyboards, EWI, and Shona mbira.
Kermit Poling is an American conductor, violinist and composer.
Mark O'Connor is an American violinist and composer whose music combines bluegrass, country, jazz and classical.
Anahid Marguerite Ajemian was an American violinist of Armenian descent. Her career in contemporary music began from her desire to help young composers of her generation get their compositions performed. Additionally, she enjoyed performing the music of established contemporary performers. She included these composers with the traditional repertoire in her performances.
Ethel is a New York based string quartet that was co-founded in 1998 by Ralph Farris, viola; Dorothy Lawson, cello; Todd Reynolds, violin; and Mary Rowell, violin. Unlike most string quartets, Ethel plays with amplification and integrates improvisation into its performances. The group's current membership includes violinists Kip Jones and Corin Lee.
Starkland is an independent record label based in Boulder, Colorado that specializes in alternative classical music. It was founded in 1991 by Thomas Steenland.
Tina Davidson is an American composer.
The Hollywood String Quartet (HSQ) was an American string quartet founded by violinist/conductor Felix Slatkin and his wife cellist Eleanor Aller. The Hollywood String Quartet is considered to be the first American-born and trained classical music chamber group to make an international impact, mainly through its landmark recordings. These recordings have long been regarded as among the most outstanding recorded performances of the string quartet repertoire.
The Ying Quartet is an American string quartet. The Ying siblings, from Winnetka, Illinois, formed the quartet in 1988 while studying at the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music. The quartet began performing in the small town of Jesup, Iowa, as the first artists involved in the National Endowment for the Arts Chamber Music Rural Residencies Program. The original members of the quartet were Timothy and Janet Ying (violins), Phillip Ying (viola), and David Ying (cello). In April 2009, Timothy Ying announced his departure from the ensemble. In 2009, Frank Huang became the first violinist of the Ying Quartet. When Huang left the quartet in 2010 to assume the position of concertmaster of the Houston Symphony, Ayano Ninomiya was appointed first violinist of the Ying Quartet. Ayano Ninomiya was, in turn, replaced by violinist Robin Scott in 2015.
The FLUX Quartet is an American string quartet dedicated to the performance of contemporary classical music. It was founded in 1998 and is based in New York City. The group is renowned for its performances of Morton Feldman's String Quartet No. 2, which lasts for more than six hours. It has performed to rave reviews in venues of all sorts, from Carnegie's Zankel Hall and Kennedy Center, to influential art institutions such as EMPAC, The Kitchen, and the Walker Art Center, to international music festivals in Australia, Europe, and the Americas. It has also premiered new works on numerous experimental series, including Roulette, Bowerbird, and the Music Gallery. FLUX's radio credits include NPR's All Things Considered, WNYC's New Sounds and Soundcheck, and WFMU's Stochastic Hit Parade. The group's discography includes recordings on the Cantaloupe, Innova, Tzadik, and Cold Blue Music labels, in addition to two critically acclaimed releases on Mode Records that encompass the full catalogue of string quartet works by Morton Feldman.
The Henschel Quartet is a German string quartet comprising the Henschel siblings; Christoph and Markus (violinists), Monika (viola) and Mathias Beyer-Karlshøj (cellist), who joined them in 1994. Brother Markus left the quartet in 2010, and was succeeded by Daniel Bell in 2012. In 2016–2018 Catalin Desaga took the place of the second violin. Today the Quartet consists of following members: Christoph Henschel and Teresa La Cour (violinists), Monika Henschel (viola) and Mathias Beyer-Karlshøj (cello).
The Carpe Diem String Quartet was founded in 2005 and is a classical string quartet based in Columbus, Ohio. The quartet's repertoire ranges from classical to contemporary chamber music. They regularly perform the works of contemporaries like Reza Vali, Richard Danielpour, Jonathan Leshnoff, Jessie Montgomery, Osvaldo Golijov, Gunther Schuller, Erberk Eryilmaz, Bruce Wolosoff, and Korine Fujiwara, as well as the works of classical composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Felix Mendelssohn, Joseph Haydn and countless others. Carpe Diem performs and tours regularly, in the United States, Canada, Japan, China, and Europe. The quartet is a strong proponent for the overlooked Russian composer Sergei Taneyev, and recorded his nine (9) string quartets, as well as his viola quintet, all for the Naxos label. The quartet regularly performs and collaborates with non-classical artists, including Willy Porter and Jayme Stone. A few of the outstanding artists with whom the quartet has played include Yo-Yo Ma, David Krakuaer, Raul Juarena, and Richard Stoltzman.
David Flynn is an Irish composer and musician with a number of major awards and commissions to his name. He is the founder and artistic director of the Irish Memory Orchestra. Many of his works music merge the influence of traditional Irish music with contemporary classical music and jazz. He is also a multi-instrumentalist who works across many genres including classical, jazz, rock and traditional Irish music, with guitar being his main instrument.
Candida Thompson is a British violinist.
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 Soldier String Quartet was a string quartet, founded by composer and violinist Dave Soldier, that specialized in performing a fusion of classical and popular music. The quartet proved a training ground for many subsequent experimental classical groups and performers, including violinists Regina Carter and Todd Reynolds, and performed at venues ranging from the classic punk rock club CBGBs to Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center.
