Miami String Quartet - Ensemble-in-Residence

Photo Credit: Paul McGuirk

IVAN CHAN, Violin
CATHY MENG ROBINSON, Violin
YU JIN, Viola
KEITH ROBINSON, cello

Praised in the New York Times as having "everything one wants in a quartet: a rich, precisely balanced sound, a broad coloristic palette, real unity of interpretive purpose and seemingly unflagging energy," the Miami String Quartet has established its place among the most widely respected quartets in America. For over twenty years, their diversity in programming, poise in performance, keen sense of ensemble and impeccable musicality has made the Miami String Quartet one of the most sought after quartets in chamber music today.

In the spring of 2003, the Miami Quartet was named visiting Quartet in Residence at the Hartt School in Hartford, CT. In the fall of 2004, the Miami Quartet began as faculty members of Kent State University in Ohio, where the quartet serves as Quartet in Residence. Winners of the Cleveland Quartet Award presented by Chamber Music America, the Miami String Quartet has served as Quartet in Residence at Florida International University and was also the resident ensemble of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's "Chamber Music Society Two" from 1999-2001.

The Miami String Quartet has appeared extensively throughout the United States and Europe. Highlights of recent seasons include performances in New York at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C, as well as engagements in Boston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, New Orleans, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Paul, and its own concert series in Palm Beach, Florida. International highlights include appearances in Bern, Cologne, Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, Istanbul, Lausanne, Montreal, Rio de Janeiro, Hong Kong, Taipei and Paris. The Quartet has recently toured with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and they appear annually with the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. The Miami Quartet has also performed works with symphony orchestras, such as the American Sinfonietta, New World Symphony, and Miami Chamber Symphony. Other recent collaborations include performances with the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio and with soprano Arianna Zukerman.

The Miami String Quartet is in demand at many of the country's great festivals. For the last several years, the Quartet has served as resident ensemble at the Kent/Blossom Music Festival in Ohio, and has appeared at Chamber Music Northwest, Mostly Mozart, Ravinia, the Brevard Festival, Rutgers Summerfest, Music from Angel Fire, Virginia Arts Festival - where it is the resident ensemble - and at the festivals of La Jolla, Santa Fe, and Pensacola.

The ensemble's interest in new music has led to many commissions and premieres. In July of 2008, the group teamed up with Imani Winds to premiere Roberto Sierra's Concierto da Camera, a chamber concerto for wind quintet and string quartet commissioned by Chamber Music Northwest, Stanford University, and Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Other recent commissions include a new work by composer Annie Gosfield, commissioned by the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival; a joint commissioning by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the VA Arts Festival of a new piano quintet by Bruce Adolphe; and a new work by composer Stephen Jaffe commissioned by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. In 2000, the players gave the world premiere of Augusta Read Thomas's Invocations. In the 1997-98 season, the Quartet presented the American premieres of Quartet Nos. 1 and 2 by Peteris Vasks, which met with enormous acclaim and were subsequently recorded; Vasks' Quartet No. 3 has since become a signature piece for the ensemble. Among other new music highlights are a commissioning grant from Chamber Music America for a piano quintet from Maurice Gardner, world premiere performances of the quartet Whispers of Mortality by Bruce Adolphe, a quartet by Philip Maneval, Maurice Gardner's Quartet No. 2 and Concertino as well as premieres of Robert Starer's Quartet Nos. 2 and 3, and David Baker's Summer Memories.

The Miami String Quartet's first recording of the first two quartets of Alberto Ginastera was released in 1994. Their second CD, of Saint-Saëns Quartets 1 and 2 and Faure's String Quartet, was released in the fall of 1997 on BMG Conifer. The aforementioned 1999 BMG recording of Peteris Vasks' Quartet Nos. 1, 2 and 3 garnered unqualified praise on both sides of the Atlantic.

In 1992, the Miami String Quartet became the first string quartet in a decade to win First Prize of the Concert Artists Guild New York Competition. The Miami String Quartet has also won recognition in competitions throughout the world; as laureate of the 1993 Evian Competition, 1991 London String Quartet Competition, and as the 1989 Grand Prize Winner of the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition.