Escher String Quartet Set for Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival's 37th Season, 8/22-26

Celebrity chamber music ensemble Escher String Quartet arrives for a week-long residency on Cape Cod in August, filling the final days of Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival's (CCCMF) 37th season with three diverse concert programs. The performances feature the Festival's two artistic directors as instrumental guests, both celebrating the 10th anniversary serving CCCMF. Escher Residency and Nakamatsu is presented on Monday, August 22 at 7:30 pm at the Church of the Holy Spirit, 204 Monument Road, Orleans. Escher Residency and Manasse on Wednesday, August 24, 7:30 pm is held at Chatham Congregational Church, 650 Main Street. The season comes to a brilliant close with Escher Residency and Symphonic Finale on Friday, August 26, 7:30 pm at Wellfleet Congregational Church, 200 Main Street.

Escher String Quartet commences its residency week in concert with Artistic Director Jon Nakamatsu as guest musician on piano. An engaging program of Schubert's lyrical Arpeggione Sonata and Brahms' electrifying Piano Quartet in G Minor promises a thrilling kick off performance. On Wednesday, Schubert's breathtaking Quartettsatz and Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 1 continue the residency in concert featuring Artistic Director Jon Manasse on clarinet, joining the ensemble for Carl Maria von Weber's rousing Clarinet Quintet. Friday's season finale concert gathers all nine performers in a triumphant collective performance, with chamber arrangements of three giant orchestral works: Strauss' Till Eulenspiegel, Beethoven's Symphony No. 2 and Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 featuring Jon Nakamatsu as soloist.

Award winning Escher String Quartet is widely acclaimed for profound musical insight and rare tonal beauty. Helming from New York, the ensemble is a former BBC New Generation Artist, serves as Artists of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and is one of the very few chamber ensembles awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. Championed by world-renowned Emerson Quartet (also appearing this season at the Festival), the Escher String Quartet was invited by both Pinchas Zukerman and Itzhak Perlman to be Quartet in Residence at their respective summer festivals. Recent debuts have left a distinctive impression throughout Europe, at venues including Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Berlin Konzerthaus, Les Grands Interprètes series in Geneva, London's Kings Place, Slovenian Philharmonic Hall in Ljubljana, and festival appearances at Dublin's Great Music in Irish Houses and the Risør Chamber Music Festival in Norway. The ensemble performs widely at acclaimed U.S. venues, and fervently supports the education of young musicians, frequently offering master classes, including regular coaching at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Last spring, The Quartet released Volume 1 of the complete Mendelssohn Quartets on the BIS label, received warmly by critics. The Escher Quartet takes its name from Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher, inspired by Escher's method of interplay between individual components working together to form a whole.

Numerous solo, concerto, and chamber music appearances in the U.S. and around the world fill out Artistic Director Jon Manasse's impressive resume, who has served as a CCCMF Artistic Director since 2006. He has filled the role of principal clarinet for American Ballet Theater Orchestra and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra and New York Chamber Symphony; served as guest principal clarinetist for the New York Pops, Orchestra of St. Luke's, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and New Jersey, St. Louis and Seattle Symphony Orchestras. Has appeared as a guest clarinetist with the New York Philharmonic in concerts conducted by Valery Gergiev and André Previn, and, during the 2003-04 season, served as the principal clarinetist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.

Co-Artistic Director, Manasse/Nakamatsu duo partner and American pianist Jon Nakamatsu draws unanimous praise as a true aristocrat of the keyboard, whose playing combines elegance, clarity, and electrifying power. A native of California, Nakamatsu raised international attention in 1997 when he was named Gold Medalist of the Tenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, the only American to have achieved this distinction since 1981. Mr. Nakamatsu has performed world-wide, collaborating with such conductors as James Conlon, Marek Janowski, Raymond Leppard, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, Osmo Vänskä and Hans Vonk. He also performed at a White House concert hosted by President and Mrs. Clinton, in New York's Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, Washington D.C.'s Kennedy Center, amongst others. He has worked with various chamber ensembles, and has toured repeatedly with the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet. Nakamatsu has served on multiple international piano competition juries and has also been invited as a guest speaker at numerous institutions including the Van Cliburn Foundation, Stanford University and the Juilliard School.

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