Daedalus Quartet

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. Since winning the top prize in the Banff International String Quartet Competition in 2001, the 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 2017-18 season includes a collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania to present the complete Beethoven string quartets; a performance of Mendelssohn's Octet with the Brentano Quartet, to mark the series finale concert for Newtown Friends of Chamber Music in Connecticut; two tours of the West Coast, including an engagement with the Festival of New American Music in Sacramento, CA; and a 22-concert tour of Germany in the spring of 2018.

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. 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, Ricardo Morales, and Alexander Fiterstein; jazz bassist John Patitucci; and violists Roger Tapping and Donald Weilerstein.

The Daedalus' most recent recording, for Bridge Records, features the string quartets of George Perle. In 2014 the quartet recorded Joan Tower's White Water (written for the Daedalus) as well as her Dumbarton Quintet (with pianist Blair McMillen). The quartet’s debut recording, music of Stravinsky, Sibelius, and Ravel, was released by Bridge Records in 2006. Other recordings include Haydn’s complete “Sun” Quartets, Op. 20, an album of chamber music by Lawrence Dillon, and the complete string quartets of Fred Lerdahl.

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 the Chamber Music Society, which appointed the Daedalus Quartet as The Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two) quartet for 2005-07. The Daedalus Quartet 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 funded a three-year residency in Suffolk County, Long Island from 2007-10. The award-winning members of the Daedalus Quartet hold degrees from The Juilliard School, Curtis Institute, Cleveland Institute, and Harvard University.