Tesla Quartet

New York's Tesla Quartet has emerged as a leading ensemble on the city's competitive chamber music scene, issuing a debut album in 2018 and winning top prizes and bookings. The group has also cultivated musical outreach and community involvement to an unusual degree. Ross Snyder (violin), Michelle Lie (violin), Edwin Kaplan (viola), and Serafim Smigelskiy (cello) joined forces at the Juilliard School in 2008, taking their name from visionary physicist Nikola Tesla and from an aphorism of his: "Though free to think and act, we are held together, like the stars in the firmament, with ties inseparable. These ties cannot be seen, but we can feel them." They quickly took second prize at the J.C. Arriaga Chamber Music Competition and earned the position of graduate string-quartet-in-residence at the University of Colorado, also studying there with the Takács Quartet. Further fellowship studies at the Aspen Music Festival's Center for Advanced Quartet Studies brought international awards including third prizes at the Sixth International Joseph Haydn Chamber Music Competition in Vienna and the London International String Quartet Competition. This student résumé complete, the Tesla Quartet launched a vigorous concert schedule that has taken them to venues across North America as well as in Germany, Hungary (at Esterházy Palace, Haydn's longtime place of employment), Austria, China, Germany, England (including two concerts at London's Wigmore Hall), and South Korea. As well, they often perform community-oriented concerts at libraries, public schools, retirement homes, hospitals, and even soup kitchens. They have offered master classes at several Colorado institutions and have established a community residency in Hickory, North Carolina, that encompasses school and college workshops as well as a chamber music series. The Tesla Quartet was signed to the Orchid Classics label and released its debut album, featuring music by Haydn, Ravel, and Stravinsky, in 2018. They launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund their sophomore release, an album of clarinet quintets with clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein.
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