Recognized for its virtuosity, exuberant performance style, and often daring repertory choices, the Pacifica Quartet has carved out a critically lauded musical path. Recent career honors include appointment as quartet-in-residence at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, taking the position held for 43 years by the Guarneri Quartet; being named 2009 Ensemble of the Year by Musical America; and winning the 2009 Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance.
Formed in 1994, the ensemble quickly won top prizes in leading international competitions, including the 1998 Naumburg Chamber Music Award. The Quartet was subsequently honored in 2002 with Chamber Music America’s Cleveland Quartet Award and appointment to The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s CMS Two program for gifted young musicians. In May 2006, the Pacifica Quartet was awarded a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, only the second chamber music ensemble to be so honored in the Grant’s long history.
The Pacifica Quartet tours extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia, performing in the world’s major concert halls in cities such as London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Vienna, and Tokyo. Each season the ensemble can be heard on many of the nation’s most prominent radio broadcasts, including Chicago’s WFMT, Boston’s WGBH, and American Public Media’s Performance Today and St. Paul Sunday. Having presented performances of the complete Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Elliott Carter quartets in recent seasons, the Quartet is preparing the monumental Shostakovich quartet cycle for the 2010-2011 season, to be performed in Chicago and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2011-2012, the Pacifica will take the Shostakovich cycle to London’s Wigmore Hall and will also present the complete Beethoven cycle in New York at the Met.
An ardent advocate of contemporary music, the Pacifica commissions and performs as many as eight new works a year and has championed American composer Elliott Carter’s five string quartets in single-concert performances on prestigious stages in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. These groundbreaking concerts, which the Pacifica pioneered in 2002, are still unique in the chamber music world. In 2008 the Pacifica released its Grammy Award-winning CD recording of Carter’s quartets Nos. 1&5 on the Naxos label, and its 2009 release of Carter’s quartets Nos. 2, 3, & 4 completed the two-CD set. The Pacifica’s other recent recordings of Mendelssohn’s complete string quartets and Declarations: Music Between the Wars have also attracted praise from critics in the U.S and abroad.
The members of the Pacifica Quartet live in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, where they were appointed to the faculty of the University of Illinois in 2004 and serve as Faculty Quartet in Residence. In addition to their recent appointment as quartet-in-residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Pacifica Quartet members also serve as resident performing artists at the University of Chicago and the Longy School of Music in Boston.
The Pacifica String Quartet
