The Borromeo String Quartet
http://www.borromeoquartet.org
Nicholas Kitchen, Violin
Kristopher Tong, Violin
Mai Motobuchi, Viola
Yeesun Kim, cello
Ensemble-in-Residence at the New England Conservatory of Music
Ensemble-in-Residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Ensemble-in-Residence at the Taos School of Music summer program
Winner of the 2007 Avery Fisher Career Grant
Winner of Lincoln Center's Martin E. Segal Award (2001)
Winner of the Cleveland Quartet Award (1998)
Ensemble-in-Residence for National Public Radio's Performance
Today (1998-99)
Top Prize at the International String Quartet Competition in
Evian, France (1990)
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News
Quotes
"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 Chicago Tribune
"A musical experience of luminous beauty"
- The San Diego Reader
"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."
- The Boston Globe
"The digital tide washing over society is lapping at the shores
of classical music. The Borromeo players
have embraced it in their daily musical lives like no other
major chamber music group."
- New York Times
“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.”
– from ‘Music and the Soul' by author
Kurt Leland
Each
visionary performance of the award-winning Borromeo String
Quartet strengthens and deepens its reputation as one of the
most important ensembles of our time. Admired and sought after
for both its fresh interpretations of the classical music canon
and its championing of works by 20th and 21st century composers,
the ensemble has been hailed for its"edge-of-the-seat
performances," by the Boston Globe, which called it"simply the
best there is."
Now celebrating its 25th anniversary, the Borromeo continues to
be a pioneer in its use of technology, and has the trailblazing
distinction of being the first string quartet to utilize laptop
computers on the concert stage. Reading music this way helps
push artistic boundaries, allowing the artists to perform solely
from 4-part scores and composers’ manuscripts, a revealing and
metamorphic experience which these dedicated musicians now teach
to students around the world. As the New York Times noted,"The
digital tide washing over society is lapping at the shores of
classical music. The Borromeo players have embraced it in their
daily musical lives like no other major chamber music group."
Moreover, the Quartet often leads discussions enhanced by
projections of handwritten manuscripts, investigating with the
audience the creative process of the composer. And in 2003 the
Borromeo became the first classical ensemble to make its own
live concert recordings and videos, distributing them for many
years to audiences through its Living Archive. The next offering
of Living Archive, a music learning web portal, will be released
next season.
Passionate educators, the
Borromeos encourage audiences of all ages to explore and listen
to both traditional and contemporary repertoire in new ways. The
ensemble uses multi-media tools such as video projection to
share the often surprising creative process behind some works,
or to show graphically the elaborate architecture behind others.
This produces delightfully refreshing viewpoints and has been a
springboard for its acclaimed young people’s programs. One such
program is MATHEMUSICA which delves into the numerical
relationships that under-pin the sounds of music and show how
musical syntax mirrors natural forms. CLASSIC VIDEO uses one
movement of a quartet as the platform from which to teach
computer drawing, video editing, animation, musical form and
production processes to create a meaningful joining of music and
visual art.
The quartet has been ensemble-in-residence at the New England
Conservatory and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum for
twenty-three years; and has worked extensively as performers and
educators with the Library of Congress (highlighting both its
manuscripts and instrument collections); the Chamber Music
Society of Lincoln Center and the Taos School of Music. The
ensemble joined the Emerson Quartet as the 2014-15 Hittman
Ensembles in Residence at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore,
and its upcoming season includes substantial residencies at
Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Kansas University in
Lawrence, and the San Francisco Conservatory.
The
ensemble has been acclaimed for its presentation of the cycle of
Bartok String Quartets as well as its lecture"BARTOK: PATHS NOT
TAKEN," both of which give audiences a once-in-a-lifetime chance
to hear a set of rediscovered alternate movements Béla Bartók
drafted for his six Quartets. Describing a Bartok concert at the
Curtis Institute, the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that the
quartet"performed at a high standard that brought you so deeply
into the music's inner workings that you wondered if your brain
could take it all in ... The music's mystery, violence, and
sorrow become absolutely inescapable."
Also noteworthy in the BSQ repertory are its dramatic
discoveries within the manuscripts of the Beethoven Quartets,
and its performances of the COMPLETE CYCLE; the BEETHOVEN
DECATHALON (four concerts of Beethoven’s last ten quartets, all
with pre-concert lectures exploring his manuscripts); and single
BEETHOVEN TRYPTICH concerts (one concert including three
quartets). Its expansive repertoire also includes the
Shostakovich Cycle and those of Mendelssohn, Dvorak, Brahms,
Schumann, Schoenberg, Janacek, Lera Auerbach, Tchaikovsky, and
Gunther Schuller.
The Quartet has collaborated with some of this generation’s most
important composers, including Gunther Schuller, John Cage,
Gyorgy Ligeti, Steve Reich, Osvaldo Golijov, Jennifer Higdon,
Steve Mackey, John Harbison, and Leon Kirchner, among many
others; and has performed on major concert stages across the
globe, including appearances at Carnegie Hall, the Berlin
Philharmonie, Wigmore Hall, Suntory Hall, the Concertgebouw,
Seoul Arts Center, Shanghai Oriental Arts Center, the Incontri
in Terra di Siena Chamber Music Festival in Tuscany, the Prague
Spring Festival and the Haydn Festival in Eisenstadt.
The 2015-16 season includes performances in Switzerland, Japan,
Korea and China; the Bartók Cycle in Boston, San Francisco and
at the Library of Congress; and appearances at the Schubert Club
in Minneapolis, Amherst College, and Trinity Church Wall Street,
to name only a few.
"Nothing less than masterful" (Cleveland.com), the Borromeo
Quartet has received numerous awards throughout its illustrious
career, including Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Career Grant and
Martin E. Segal Award, and Chamber Music America’s Cleveland
Quartet Award. It was also a recipient of the Young Concert
Artists International Auditions and top prizes at the
International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France.
[September 2015]
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