Parker Quartet

The Parker Quartet cultivates a rigorous sound that has taken the group to important international venues and led to a variety of collaborations with both traditional and contemporary artists. The group's work has a strong educational component, and it has held various residencies, including a long-running stint as artists-in-residence at Harvard University. The Parker Quartet was founded in Boston in 2002 and named after the Omni Parker House hotel there. The members -- violinists Daniel Chong and Ken Hamao, violist Jessica Bodner, and cellist Kee-Hyun Kim -- were graduates of the New England Conservatory of Music and the Juilliard School, and the group benefited from time in the New England Conservatory's Professional String Quartet Training Program from 2006 to 2008. They also had instruction and mentorship from the original members of the Cleveland Quartet as well as from violist Kim Kashkashian, pianist and composer György Kurtág, and violinist Rainer Schmidt. Prizes, including a win at the Concert Artists Guild Competition, the Grand Prix and Mozart Prize at France's Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition, and Chamber Music America's Cleveland Quartet Award, helped the group's career along. The Parker Quartet released its debut album, featuring Bartók's String Quartets Nos. 2 and 5, on the Zig Zag Territoires label in 2007. From the start, the Parker Quartet has combined mastery of traditional repertory with contemporary music. The group held a residency at the Barbes Bar and Performance Space in Brooklyn and has performed collaborative concerts with folk, jazz, and world music artists. Later residencies have included those at Minnesota Public Radio (the network's first ever), the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the University of Minnesota, the University of St. Thomas, and finally Harvard, beginning in the mid-2010s and continuing into the 2020s. The Parker Quartet has appeared at top halls both domestically and internationally, including Wigmore Hall in London. Its collaborators include violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, pianists Vijay Iyer and Shai Wosner, and members of the Silk Road Ensemble, among many others. The Parker Quartet recorded Ligeti's String Quartets Nos. 1 and 2 for the Naxos label in 2009 and has also recorded for Innova, Nimbus Alliance, and ECM New Series, where the group, joined by Kashkashian, released an album featuring Dvořák's String Quintet, Op. 97, as well as works by Kurtág, in 2021.
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