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Gualala Arts
Promoting public interest and participation in the arts since 1961.
Archive of past events: 2004 through 2014
Praised by The New Yorker as "a fresh and vital young participant in what is a golden age of American string quartets," the Daedalus Quartet has established itself as a leader among the new generation of string ensembles. In the nine years of its existence the Daedalus Quartet has received plaudits from critics and listeners alike for the security, technical finish, interpretive unity, and sheer gusto of its performances - and this in cannily selected repertoire ranging from the classicism of Haydn to the complexities of Elliott Carter. "Polished and vigorous" (The New York Times); "a young quartet whose moment has arrived" (The New York Sun); "jet-propelled rockets of blistering virtuosity ...the music rang gloriously" (The Washington Post) -- these are only a few of the accolades garnered by the Daedalus Quartet in recent seasons. On October 14, 2008, senior critic Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times wrote: It is hard to imagine a more inviting place to hear a Haydn string quartet than Philosophy Hall at Columbia University, especially at noontime with your lunch on your lap. On Monday the excellent Daedalus Quartet, in residence at Columbia, opened the second season of free Lunchtime Concerts at the university by playing Haydn's Quartet in C (Op. 20, No. 2), one of the six "Sun" Quartets from that opus. The performance was insightful and vibrant, and the setting ideally intimate. Hearing such an excellent, up-close performance made this Haydn piece seem even more monumental. And what a splendid way to spend your lunch hour. In 2007 critic Steve Smith of The New York Times took particular notice of the refined musicality of Daedalus's performance of Debussy's String Quartet at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center: The Daedalus players ... underscored the work's formal elegance with impeccable balance and articulation, while also emphasizing its elusive passion and wit through imaginative management of phrasing and dynamics. (January 19, 2007) More recently, the Quartet received high praise from Peter Dobrin of The Philadelphia Inquirer in a review of a Daedalus performance for The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society in January 2009: In Haydn's String Quartet in F Major, Opus 77, No. 2, Hob. III:82, each member bent the tempos of short, interloping figures so subtly you could only marvel at the finesse. But it was Stravinsky's Three Pieces for String Quartet from 1914 that was the best marriage between ensemble and composer ... Some pizzicati popped like balloons, other like gentle soap bubbles. But with a haiku-like economy and density of ideas, you never had the suspicion that impressive technique was dictating the music itself. (January 19, 2009) During the 2009-10 season the Daedalus Quartet was heard at Woodstock, NY (Maverick Concerts); New York's Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall; Brooklyn's Bargemusic; Eureka Chamber Music Series, CA; Cleveland Chamber Music Society; University of Pennsylvania, PA; Tuscaloosa, AL; Wolf Trap, Vienna, VA (featuring the world premiere of Lawrence Dillon's String Quartet No. 4); Winston-Salem, NC; Storioni Music Festival, Eindhoven, Holland (with pianist Peter Frankl); University of Buffalo, NY; the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, NY; Drew University, Madison, NJ; Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY; Haverford College, Haverford, PA; Coastal Concerts, Lewes, DE; Friends of Chamber Music, Stockton, CA; Philharmonic Society of Orange County, Irvine, CA; Mainly Mozart Festival, San Diego, CA (with David Shifrin, clarinet); Purchase College Performing Arts Center, Purchase, NY; Chicago Chamber Music Society, Chicago, IL; Islip Arts Council, Brentwood, NY; Howland Chamber Music Circle, Beacon, NY (with Benjamin Hochman, piano), and the MIT Guest Artist Series, Cambridge, MA. Since its founding the Daedalus Quartet has performed in many of the world's leading musical venues; in the United States and Canada these include Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center (Great Performers series), the Library of Congress, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., and Boston's Gardner Museum, as well as on major series in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg, and Vancouver. Abroad the ensemble has been heard in such famed locations as the Musikverein in Vienna, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Cité de la Musique in Paris, and in leading venues in Japan. The Daedalus Quartet has won plaudits for its adventurous exploration of contemporary music, most notably the compositions of Elliott Carter, George Perle, György Kurtág and György Ligeti. Among the works the ensemble has premiered is David Horne's Flight from the Labyrinth, commissioned for the Quartet by the Caramoor Festival. The Quartet has also collaborated with some of the world's finest instrumentalists: these include pianists Marc-André Hamelin, Simone Dinnerstein, Awadagin Pratt, Joyce Yang and Benjamin Hochman; clarinetists Paquito D'Rivera and Alexander Fiterstein; and violists Roger Tapping and Donald Weilerstein. To date the Quartet has forged associations with some of America's leading classical music and educational institutions: Carnegie Hall, through its European Concert Hall Organization (ECHO) Rising Stars program; and Lincoln Center, which appointed the Daedalus Quartet as the Chamber Music Society Two quartet for 2005-07. The Daedalus Quartet has been Columbia University's Quartet-in-Residence since 2005, and has served as Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania since 2006. In 2007, the Quartet was awarded Lincoln Center's Martin E. Segal Award. The Quartet won Chamber Music America's Guarneri String Quartet Award, which funds a three-year residency in Suffolk County, Long Island, beginning with the 2007-08 season. The award-winning members of the Daedalus Quartet hold degrees from the Juilliard School, Curtis Institute, Cleveland Institute, and Harvard University. Founding members violinist Min-Young Kim and cellist Raman Ramakrishnan grew up in East Patchogue, Long Island; they met violist Jessica Thompson, a Minneapolis native, at the Marlboro Festival. Violinist Ara Gregorian joined the Daedalus Quartet in early March, 2010. You can listen to live concerts by Daedalus Quartet at Lincoln Center at daedalusquartet.com/Live.
The Gualala Arts Center, located at 46501 Old State Highway in Gualala, CA, Join us in celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Gualala Arts, 1961 - 2011
Serving the coastal communities of northern Sonoma & southern Mendocino Counties.
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Gualala Arts will present the Daedalus Quartet on Sunday, March 20, 2011 at 4:00 p.m.
This is a return engagement to Gualala Arts Center from 2008.