Borromeo String Quartet, ensemble
Nicholas Kitchen, Kristopher Tong, violins; Mai Motobushi, viola; Yeesun Kim, cello
In his recent book Music and the Soul: A Listener's Guide to Achieving Transcendent Musical Experiences, author Kurt Leland says: "It would not be an exaggeration for me to say that much of this book has come from trying to figure out what makes the Borromeo Quartet's performances so emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually captivating." The "visionary" and "ravishingly realized" performances of the internationally acclaimed Borromeo String Quartet have established it as one of the most important string quartets of our time. The Chicago Tribune calls the Borromeo "a remarkably accomplished string quartet, not simply for its high technical polish and refined tone, but more importantly for the searching musical insights it brings." The San Diego Reader calls their performances "a musical experience of luminous beauty," and the Boston Globe says "Each of the greatest string quartets has redefined what the possibilities of the medium are: through the perfection of its ensemble and intonation, through its poise and its passion, the Borromeos are recreating the medium anew and we are lucky to be here to hear it."
Since their explosive debut in 1989, the Borromeo have become one of the most sought after strings quartets in the world, performing over 100 concerts of classical and contemporary literature across three continents each season. Audiences and critics alike champion their revealing explorations of Schoenberg, Brahms, Ligeti, Kurtag, and Janacek and affinity for making challenging contemporary repertoire approachable. Lauded for its absolute mastery of the complete Beethoven and Bartok quartet cycles, the ensemble is currently focused on the complete quartet cycle of Dimitri Shostakovich.
They can be heard regularly in the world's most illustrious concert halls including the Philharmonie in Berlin, Casals and Dai-Ichi Semei Halls in Tokyo, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Opera Bastille in Paris, Wigmore Hall in London, and in America at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, Boston's Jordan Hall, the Library of Congress and the National Gallery. The Quartet is regularly invited to perform on distinguished chamber music series across the U.S. and abroad and have participated in the Spoleto Festival in Italy, Orlando Festival in The Netherlands, Music Isle Festival in Korea, Norway's Stavanger Festival, Tanglewood, Ravinia, Caramoor, Mainly Mozart, and the Santa Fe, Rockport, Cape Cod, and Vancouver chamber music festivals among many others. Recent collaborators include the violinist Midori; pianists Peter Serkin, Christophe Eschenbach, Leon Fleisher, Gary Graffman, Menahem Pressler, Meng-Chieh Liu, and Jonathan Biss; soprano Dawn Upshaw; clarinetists David Shifrin and Richard Stoltzman; violists Kim Kashkashian and Michael Tree; cellist Bernard Greenhouse; as well as members of the Guarneri, Juilliard, and Cleveland Quartets.
The Borromeo Quartet's long-standing and celebrated residency at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has been called "one of the defining experiences of civilization in Boston" [Boston Globe]; and its ongoing concert series at the Tenri Cultural Institute in New York has been hailed as "one of New York's best kept secrets" [New York Sun]. They are faculty Quartet-in-Residence at the New England Conservatory of Music as well as Dai-Ichi Semei Hall in Tokyo, and will return this summer for a third season in residence at the famed Taos Summer School of Music in New Mexico. First violinist Nicholas Kitchen just completed a six-year tenure as Artistic Director of the Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival.
In April 2007 the Borromeo Quartet was a recipient the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. Other highlights of the current season include the complete Shostakovich quartet cycle at the Gardner Museum, artist residencies in Israel at the Jerusalem Music Center and in France for ProQuartet, the premiere of a concerto by Lera Auerbach for String Quartet and Orchestra with the Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra in Ohio, a series of educational projects with the Library of Congress, and studio recordings of music by composer Steven Mackey.
As Quartet-in-Residence at New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, the BSQ works with the institution's "Learning Through Music" program and their public discussion series, "Early Evenings with the Borromeo," regularly attracts standing-room-only crowds. As Chamber Music America grant recipients the quartet continues to develop its multimedia outreach program targeting public school children, as well as developmentally disabled children and young adults, and features the BSQ performing live along with video projections of its own creation focused on composer biographies. In 2005 the Borromeo was commissioned by the Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society to conduct a five-month long series of outreach concerts throughout the city focused on the music of Bela Bartok, including Bartok Night, a one act play for solo actor and string quartet by playwright Lynne Conner. In addition, the ensemble serves as an advisor to Community MusicWorks of Providence, Rhode Island, an organization dedicated to enriching the lives of inner city youths and families through classical music.
In 2004 the Aaron Copland House honored the Borromeo's commitment to premiering contemporary music by creating the Borromeo Quartet Award, an annual initiative that will premiere the work of important young composers to audiences internationally. It has enjoyed collaborations with John Cage, Gyorgy Ligeti, Osvaldo Golijov, Steve Mackey, John Harbison, Leon Kirchner, Gunther Schuller, Jennifer Higdon, and is currently performing "Hope Cycles" a new work by Lior Novak commissioned for them by the Serge Koussevitzky Foundation at the Library of Congress.
In 2003 the Borromeo made classical music history with its pioneering record label, the Living Archive Recorded Performance Series, making it is possible to order DVDs and CDs of most of its concerts around the world. The series promotes the impact of the live performance, and allows listeners the opportunity to revisit in greater depth the music they have just heard in concert, as well as explore the evolution of new and rarely performed works. The Living Archive label has been praised by both audiences and the press, and received articles in Strings, Strad, and Chamber Music magazines. Gramophone Magazine hailed the "great clarity and beauty" and "ravishing fury" of the BSQ's studio recording of masterworks by Beethoven, and their CD featuring works of Maurice Ravel was honored with the Chamber Music America/WQXR Award for Recording Excellence in 2001.
In 2000 they completed two seasons as a member of Lincoln Center's Chamber Music Society Two and served as Ensemble-in-Residence for the 98-99 season of National Public Radio's Performance Today. They are a regular guest on Rob Kapilow's program What Makes It Great, and can frequently be heard on NPR, NHK Radio and Television in Japan, and KBS Radio and Television in Korea. Gramophone Magazine hailed the "great clarity and beauty" and "ravishing fury" of the BSQ's studio recording of masterworks by Beethoven, and their CD featuring the String Quartet and Sonata for Violin and Cello of Maurice Ravel was honored with the Chamber Music America/WQXR Award for Recording Excellence in 2001.
Formed in Stresa, Italy in 1989 by four young musicians from the Curtis Institute of Music, the Quartet studied as a group at the New England Conservatory of Music and immediately won international acclaim as the recipient of top prizes in the 1990 International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France. The following year, the ensemble won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions and made its New York and Washington debuts at the 92nd Street Y and the Kennedy Center, respectively. The Borromeo Quartet was awarded Chamber Music America's Cleveland Quartet Award in 1998 and received Lincoln Center's Martin E. Segal Award in 2001. Additional information may be found at www.Borromeoquartet.com.
Borromeo String Quartet
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photo credit: Christian Steiner