Chiara Quartet
July 22 & 23 Chiara Quartet perform in Monadnock Music Festival with violist Jonathan Bagg
July 22, 2010
Chiara String Quartet
perform in Monadnock Music Festival
with violist Jonathan Bagg
Mozart's String Quintet in G minor, K. 516
Thursday, July 22 at 7:30pm
Milford Town Hall ׀ 1 Union Square
Milford, NH
Friday, July 23 at 7:30pm
Deering Church ׀ 763 Deering Center Road Deering, NH
Concerts are FREE and open to the public
Information: at www.monadnockmusic.org or 603.924.7610
“vivid and compelling” – The Boston Globe
“truly breathtaking” – The Washington Post
Chiara Quartet online: www.chiaraquartet.net
Peterborough, NH—On Thursday, July 22 at Milford Town Hall (1 Union Square, Milford, NH) and on Friday, July 23 at Deering Community Church (763 Deering Center Road, Deering, NH) at 7:30pm, The Chiara String Quartet(Rebecca Fischer and Julie Yoon, violins; Jonah Sirota, viola; and Gregory Beaver, cello) hailed as “vastly talented, vastly resourceful, and vastly committed to the music of their time” by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer will perform Mozart's String Quintet in G minor, K. 516 with violist Jonathan Bagg. The concerts are presented by Monadnock Music Festival as a part of the “Mozart Trail”, which occurs throughout the summer in central meetinghouses and churches of the small towns in the New Hampshire and the Monadnock region. The Festival aims to penetrate into communities and reach a cross section of the population by bringing performances of high artistic quality for free to people in their hometowns.
The Chiara Quartet’s performances have been described as “luminous,” “searing,” (New York Times) “soulful,” and possessing a “potent collective force” (Strings Magazine).
About the Chiara Quartet:The Chiara (“key-ARE-uh”, meaning “clear, pure, or light” in Italian) are in residence at Harvard University for four one-week periods each academic year from 2008-2011, as theBlodgett Artists-in-Residence. 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.
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; at the Philadelphia Museum of Art presented by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; and on the new Just Strings concert series, which will take the Chiara to three of New York City's boroughs.
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.
The Chiara Quartet has been artists-in-residence at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln since 2005. 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.
About Jonathan Bagg: As solo violist Jonathan Bagg has a continuing interest in bringing new, unfamiliar, and forgotten works to life. Recitals have brought him to places such as the Phillips Gallery in Washington DC, Boston’s Jordan Hall, and Manchester, New Hampshire’s Currier Gallery. Concerto appearances include the Pioneer Valley Symphony in Massachusetts, the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston, the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, and the Monadnock Music Festival Orchestra.
Bagg has recorded the solo music for viola and piano by Robert Fuchs (1847-1927), and also contemporary solo works by Malcolm Peyton and Donald Wheelock. His most recent disc is of music for viola and piano by Robert and Clara Schumann with pianist Jane Hawkins, on the Centaur label. He appears on an upcoming Bridge Records CD playing a work written for him by American composer Arthur Levering.
In 2007 Mr. Bagg became Music Director of the Monadnock Music festival in New Hampshire. He directs the chamber music program at Duke University, where he served as Director of Undergraduate Studies for seven years. He graduated with honors from both Yale University (B.A.), and the New England Conservatory (M.M.), where he was a student of Walter Trampler.
