American String Quartet

The American String Quartet is an iconic U.S. chamber ensemble that has performed in all 50 states and earned strong praise for performances in many of the world's top concert halls. They specialize in complete cycles and detailed examinations of the works of major chamber music composers. The American String Quartet was formed in 1974 in New York, while all four members were students at the Juilliard School in Manhattan. They made a major splash immediately, winning the Coleman and Naumburg Awards, and were hired as quartet-in-residence at Colorado's Aspen Music Festival, a position they have continued to hold. The group has also served as resident quartet at the Manhattan School of Music since 1984 and has held similar guest positions at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, the Peabody Conservatory, and the Taos School of Music. The American String Quartet's tour schedule has been unusually broad and wide. In addition to traveling to all corners of the U.S., including Alaska and Hawaii, the quartet has toured Asia and South America (the latter multiple times), performed on the BBC, and played complete cycles of Beethoven quartets in Israel (where they have toured three times) and Mexico. Composer cycles have been a specialty of the quartet, which has recorded all those of Mozart and performed those of Bartók, Schubert, Schoenberg, and Beethoven in full as well. The group has also championed contemporary music, giving, among others, the world premieres of the String Quartet No. 4 of Richard Danielpour and A Distant Voice Calling by Curt Cacioppo, and in 2016 they joined novelist Salman Rushdie in a work for narrator and string quartet by Paul Cantelon, based on Rushdie's novel The Enchantress of Florence. The group's busy touring schedule has not hampered a vigorous recording career, with albums appearing mostly on the MusicMasters and Nimbus labels; in 2018 the quartet released American Romantics, featuring music by Dvorák, Barber, and Robert Sirota, on their own label. As of that year, the group's members included violinists Peter Winograd and Laurie Carney, violist Daniel Avshalomov, and cellist Wolfram Koessel.
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