Chiara Quartet
Chiara Quartet and pianist Simone Dinnerstein perform together in Philadelphia
March 07, 2010
Philadelphia Chamber Music Society presents
Chiara String Quartet
with pianist Simone Dinnerstein
includes Philadelphia premiere of Robert Sirota's Triptych,
written to commemorate September 11, 2001
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Sunday, March 7 at 3pm
2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia
Tickets: $23 at www.pcmsconcerts.org or 215.569.8080
"truly breathtaking"
– The Washington Post on the Chiara Quartet
"the pianists' pianist of Generation X"
– The New Yorker on Simone Dinnerstein
Program: Haydn's Quartet in C Major, Op. 74, No. 1; Robert Sirota's Triptych, Dvorak's Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 81
Chiara Quartet: www.chiaraquartet.com | Simone Dinnerstein: www.simonedinnerstein.com | Robert Sirota: www.robertsirota.com
New York, NY — The Chiara String Quartet (Rebecca Fischer and Julie Yoon, violins; Jonah Sirota, viola; and Gregory Beaver, cello) will perform in Philadelphia on Sunday, March 7 at 3pm, presented by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway). Their program includes Dvorak's Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 81, with pianist Simone Dinnerstein; the Philadelphia premiere of Robert Sirota's Triptych, written to commemorate September 11; and Haydn's Quartet in C Major, Op. 74 No. 1.
Described by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as "vastly talented, vastly resourceful, and vastly committed to the music of their time," the Chiara is also continually finding new meaning within pieces from the well-established quartet canon. Their performances have been described as "luminous," "searing," (New York Times) "soulful," "biting," and possessing a "potent collective force" (Strings Magazine).
The Chiara and Simone Dinnerstein, who will collaborate on the Dvorak in this concert, are longtime friends, having met while still students at the Tanglewood Music Center. Both the quartet and Ms. Dinnerstein have performed in Philadelphia frequently, and were members of the roster of the Philadelphia-based Astral Artists for a number of years. Ms. Dinnerstein's recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations took the classical world by storm in 2007, ranking No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Classical Chart in its first week of sales. Her follow-up album, The Berlin Concert, also gained the No. 1 spot on the Chart, and she has recently been signed by Sony Classical. The Washington Post calls her, "a phenomenon in the world of classical music."
The Chiara Quartet's program also includes the Philadelphia premiere of Triptych by New York-based composer Robert Sirota, the father of Chiara violist Jonah Sirota. Written to commemorate the victims of September 11, Triptych had an emotional first performance at Trinity Church on Wall Street, one of the churches on the periphery of Ground Zero, by the Chiara Quartet, which has also commercially recorded the work.
While the first movement is an evocation of alarm, Mr. Sirota describes the second and third movements as "a kind of meditation on the tragedy, first a grieving and then a consolation." The piece was created in tandem with a painting of the same name by Deborah Patterson. Like the images, the music can be described as a mixture of abstract and real, a blend of atonality and tonality. The Aspen Times noted that Mr. Sirota captured "the sounds of that fateful day in Lower Manhattan (including the buzz of the airplane in a sustained cello note and car alarms in the violins) to weave emotionally powerful music."
About the Chiara String Quartet: The Chiara Quartet are Blodgett Artists-in-Residence at Harvard University, in addition to their ongoing artist residency at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Awarded the Guarneri Quartet Residency Award for artistic excellence by Chamber Music America, the Quartet's other honors include a top prize at the Paolo Borciani International Competition, winning the Astral Artistic Services National Audition, and winning First Prize at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition.
Playing "Chamber Music in Any Chamber," the Chiara Quartet reaches from the concert hall into clubs, bars and galleries, expanding the places to hear live classical music while returning chamber music to its roots in intimate spaces. Alongside performances in major concert halls such as Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, Philadelphia's Kimmel Center, and Harris Hall at the Aspen Music Festival, the Chiara devotes a portion of its performance season to concerts in non-classical venues including Galapagos Art Space in New York, The Tractor Tavern in Seattle, Avant Garden in Houston, and the Hideout in Chicago, among many others. Recent highlights of the Chiara Quartet's international performances include the American Academy in Rome, a critically-acclaimed eight-city tour of Sweden with clarinetist Håkan Rosengren, and a performance of Steve Reich's Different Trains in Munich at the storied Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität.
The 2009-2010 season is the first year in the Chiara Quartet's two-year Beethoven cycle, during which they will perform all sixteen of Beethoven's string quartets in Cambridge and Northampton, MA and Lincoln, NE. In keeping with their commitment to bring classical music to uncommon places, the quartet will perform "Beethoven in Bars" at clubs throughout the country, featuring Beethoven's music with new works by young composers Thierry Tidrow, Lauren Loiacono and Matthew Ricketts. The Chiara Quartet will also make its debut at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; and on the new Just Strings concert series, which will take the Chiara to three of New York City's boroughs. Additional performances will take the Quartet across the country, for performances in states including Kansas, Nebraska, North Carolina, Maryland, Texas, and Connecticut.
Recent collaborators of the Chiara Quartet include Joel Krosnick, Roger Tapping, Todd Palmer, Simone Dinnerstein, Norman Fischer, and Paul Katz, as well as members of the Orion, Ying, Cavani, and Pacifica Quartets. The ensemble has premiered works by Gabriela Lena Frank, Jefferson Friedman, Michael Wittgraf, Randall Snyder, and Nico Muhly, among others.
The Chiara discography includes the Mozart and Brahms clarinet quintets with Håkan Rosengren for SMS Classical, and the world premiere recordings of Robert Sirota's Triptych and Gabriela Lena Frank's Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout for the Quartet's own New Voice Singles label. In 2007 the Chiara recorded Jefferson Friedman's Second and Third Quartets, and they are currently at work recording the complete string quartets of Brahms for SMS Classical.
Chiara (key-ARE-uh) is an Italian word, meaning "clear, pure, or light." The Chiara trained and taught at The Juilliard School, mentoring for two years with the Juilliard Quartet, as recipients of the Lisa Arnhold Quartet Residency from 2003-2005. For more information, visit www.chiaraquartet.net. The Chiara String Quartet appears at the Philadelphia Museum by special arrangement with Astral Artists of Philadelphia. The ensemble is represented exclusively by Jaimé Campbell Morton of Artspromo.
About Simone Dinnerstein: Ms. Dinnerstein's performance schedule has taken her around the world since her triumphant New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall in 2005, performing Bach's Goldberg Variations. Recent and upcoming performances include her recital debuts at The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Lincoln Center Mostly Mozart Festival, the Aspen and Ravinia festivals, in Cologne, Paris, London, Copenhagen, Vilnius, Bremen, Rome, and Lisbon, and at the Stuttgart Bach Festival; as well as debut performances with the Dresden Philharmonic, Czech Philharmonic, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, Kristjan Järvi's Absolute Ensemble, the Tokyo Symphony, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, and the Minnesota Orchestra. In New York she has performed on the People's Symphony series at Town Hall, on Lincoln Center's Great Performers series, and in three sold-out recitals at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is also a frequent performer at (Le) Poisson Rouge in the West Village. In July 2009, she made her debut with the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall, playing Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 2.
Since 1996 Ms. Dinnerstein has played concerts throughout the United States for the Piatigorsky Foundation, an organization dedicated to bringing classical music to non-traditional venues. Amongst the places she has played are nursing homes, schools and community centers. Most notably, she gave the first classical music performance in the Louisiana state prison system when she played at the Avoyelles Correctional Center. She also performed at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women, in a concert organized by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra to coincide with her BSO debut.
In addition, Ms. Dinnerstein has founded P.S. 321 Neighborhood Concerts, an evening concert series at the Brooklyn public elementary school that her son attends and where her husband teaches fifth grade. The concerts, which feature musicians Ms. Dinnerstein has admired and collaborated with during her career, is open to the public and raises funds for the school's Parent Teacher Association. The musicians performing donate their time and talent to the program.
Ms. Dinnerstein is a graduate of The Juilliard School where she was a student of Peter Serkin. She was a winner of the Astral Artist National Auditions, and has twice received the Classical Recording Foundation Award. She also studied with Solomon Mikowsky at the Manhattan School of Music and in London with Maria Curcio, the distinguished pupil of Artur Schnabel.
Simone Dinnerstein (pronounced See-MOHN-uh Dinner-STEEN) lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and son. She is managed by Tanja Dorn at IMG Artists and records exclusively for Sony Classical. For more information, visit www.simonedinnerstein.com.
About Robert Sirota: Robert Sirota's work has been performed throughout the U.S. and Europe, at venues including Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, Merkin Hall in New York, The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Tanglewood Music Center, the Aspen Music Festival, the Yellow Barn Music Festival, Benaroya Hall in Seattle, and at The Juilliard School, the Shepherd School of Music, Peabody, Oberlin Conservatory, Yong Siew Toh Conservatory in Singapore, Royal Conservatory in Toronto, and the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow. His commissions include works for the Empire Brass, American Guild of Organists, the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, the Fischer Duo, the Peabody Trio, the Webster Trio, and the Chiara String Quartet.
Robert Sirota's latest two orchestral works A Rush of Wings and 212: Symphony No. 1 were both praised in The New York Times. Of A Rush of Wings, Steve Smith wrote that the piece is, "fashioned with the clean, angular melodies, tart harmonies, lively syncopations and punchy accents of American Neo-Classicism." Of 212: Symphony No. 1, Anthony Tommasini wrote, "If directness can be considered a New York character trait, that quality comes through in Mr. Sirota's symphony. Complexity for its own sake and expressive obfuscation are not for this energetic and highly professional composer. Although the overall musical language of this score recalls the American Neo-Classicists, Mr. Sirota's compositional voice has a distinctive tartness and rhythmic bite. Thick, astringent chromatic harmonies come in tightly bound chords to create nervous sonorities. Yet the textures are always lucid; details come through."
Robert Sirota's catalogue is comprised of three short operas, a full-length music theatre piece, as well as orchestral, symphonic band, chamber and recital works. He has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the United States Information Agency, the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet The Composer, and the American Music Center. Among his awards are a First Prize in the Long Island Composers Alliance Competition and the Andrew White Medal from Loyola College in Baltimore. His music has been recorded by the Fischer Duo for the Gasparo label, and by the Chiara String Quartet for their New Voice Singles series.
A native New Yorker, Mr. Sirota received his earliest compositional training at The Juilliard School, and received his bachelor's degree in piano and composition from Oberlin Conservatory where he studied with Joseph Wood and Richard Hoffman. A Thomas J. Watson Fellowship allowed him to study and concertize in Paris, where his principal teacher was Nadia Boulanger. Returning to America, Mr. Sirota earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University, studying with Earl Kim and Leon Kirchner. In 2005, Mr. Sirota was appointed president of the Manhattan School of Music in New York, where he is also a member of the School's composition faculty. For more information, visit www.robertsirota.com.
