The Metropolitan Museum of Art Presents Chiara String Quartet, 5/11

The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents the Chiara String Quartet in an encore performance on Thursday, May 11, 2017 at 7pm in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium (1000 Fifth Ave) following their lauded 2015-2016 season MetLiveArts residency. The concert will include the New York premiere of Rome Prize-winner Pierre Jalbert's Canticle String Quartet No. 6 and Brahms' Clarinet Quintet with clarinetist Todd Palmer.

The Chiara Quartet premiered Jalbert's Canticle (String Quartet No. 6) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in February 2017. The piece was commissioned for them by the university's Glenn Korff School of Music, where the quartet is currently the Hixson-Lied Artists-in-Residence. Canticle consists of seven movements, highly contrasting in character, with movements I and VII serving as similar bookends to the overall arch of the work. Jalbert explains, "I have known the members of the Chiara Quartet for many years. Some of them were still students at Rice University when I arrived there in 1996 for my first full-time composition teaching post. Over the years, we have collaborated on many of my works, including my first string quartet and my Icefield Sonnets, based on the poetry of Anthony Hawley (husband of first violinist Rebecca Fischer). I have always been inspired by their performances and it was a thrill to be able to compose this new work for them." The piece opens with the quartet members striking various crotales, producing bell sounds that eventually blend with the string quartet - evoking the title, Canticle. The Chiara Quartet will record the work for an upcoming CD which will also include the composer's third and fourth string quartets.

Of the commission the Chiara Quartet says, "We are so excited to perform Canticle (String Quartet No 6), a brand-new piece by our dear friend Pierre Jalbert. We have performed and admired his music for years, and so the chance to commission him that was afforded to us by the UNL Glenn Korff School of Music was truly a dream come true. The finished result is revelatory and we truly cannot wait to share this new creation with our audiences in Lincoln and throughout the country!"

About the Chiara Quartet: Renowned for bringing fresh excitement to traditional string quartet repertoire as well as for creating insightful interpretations of new music, the Chiara String Quartet (Rebecca Fischer and Hyeyung Julie Yoon, violins; Jonah Sirota, viola; Gregory Beaver, cello) captivates its audiences throughout the country. The Chiara has established itself as among America's most respected ensembles, lauded for its "highly virtuosic, edge-of-the-seat playing" (The Boston Globe). They were the Blodgett Artists-in-Residence at Harvard University from 2008-2014.

The Chiara Quartet has been playing string quartets and asking probing questions since 2000. Always interested in engaging with the music at its core as well as reaching audiences, the quartet has dedicated itself to finding ways to make the musical experience meaningful for all involved. In this pursuit the quartet has performed in venues from major concert halls to clubs, created interactive programs for all ages, and most recently taken to performing and recording from memory, or "by heart." Described by an audience member as "a 3-D experience for the listener," playing by heart is deeply rewarding for the Chiara as well; memorizing the score helps them to closely relate to the composer's compositional process. The Chiara's latest recording is Bartók by Heart, a 2-CD set featuring Bartók's six string quartets, played entirely from memory, released in August 2016 on Azica. The quartet's previous album, Brahms by Heart, was released on Azica in March 2014.

In addition to the Chiara Quartet's regular performances in major concert halls across the country, including Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall, Philadelphia's Kimmel Center, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the National Gallery in Washington DC, the ensemble was one of the first string quartets to perform in alternative venues for chamber music performance. Recent highlights of the Chiara Quartet's international performances include extensive tours of China, Korea, and Sweden.

In addition to Bartók by Heart and Brahms by Heart, the complete Chiara discography includes a Grammy-nominated recording of Jefferson Friedman's String Quartets Nos. 2 and 3 on New Amsterdam Records, the Mozart and Brahms clarinet quintets for SMS Classical, and the world premiere recordings of Robert Sirota's Triptych and Gabriela Lena Frank's Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout on the Quartet's own New Voice Singles label.

The Chiara has been committed to the creation of new music for string quartet since its inception, and has commissioned composers including Gabriela Lena Frank, Jefferson Friedman, Nico Muhly, Daniel Ott, Robert Sirota, among others. Recent collaborators in performance include The Juilliard and St. Lawrence String Quartets, Joel Krosnick, Roger Tapping, Todd Palmer, Robert Levin, Simone Dinnerstein, Norman Fischer, Nadia Sirota, and Paul Katz, as well as members of the Orion, Ying, Cavani, and Pacifica Quartets.

In the summer, the Chiara Quartet is in residence at Greenwood Music Camp as well as the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Chamber Music Institute. 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. Chiara (key-ARE-uh) is an Italian word, meaning "clear, pure, or light." For more information, visit www.chiaraquartet.com.

About Todd Palmer: Clarinetist Todd Palmer has appeared as soloist, recitalist, chamber music collaborator, educator, arranger, and presenter in a variety of musical endeavors around the world. A three time Grammy nominated artist, he has appeared as soloist with the Atlanta, Houston, BBC Scotland orchestras; St. Paul, New York, Cincinnati, Montréal, and Metamorphosen chamber orchestras, as well as many others. He's collaborated with many of the world's finest string ensembles such as the St. Lawrence, Brentano, Borromeo, Pacifica, Daedalus and Ying quartets; and has also shared the stage with sopranos Kathleen Battle, Renée Fleming, Elizabeth Futral, Heidi Grant Murphy and Dawn Upshaw, and many other notable instrumentalists. He has championed Osvaldo Golijov's Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind around the world and commissioned the theatre work Orpheus and Euridice by Ricky Ian Gordon which was presented by Great Performers at Lincoln Center in 2005. He was a winner of the Young Concert Artist International Auditions, and has participated in numerous music festivals in the US and abroad including 18 years at Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, SC and five years at the Marlboro Festival and the Tanglewood Institute, where he was awarded the Leonard Bernstein Fellowship. He has also held principle clarinet positions in the Minnesota Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke's, the Gotham Chamber Opera and the Grand Teton Festival. In 2008 he premiered David Bruce's Gumboots, a Carnegie Hall commission that was written especially for him and the St. Lawrence Quartet, and for two years appeared in Lincoln Center's revival of South Pacific. Recently he appeared as soloist in Robert Lepage's staging of Stravinsky's The Nightingale and Other Fables at BAM and performed the Mozart clarinet concerto as a part of Great Performers at Lincoln Center's What Makes It Great series.

About MetLiveArts: The groundbreaking live arts series at The Metropolitan Museum of Art explores contemporary performance through the lens of the Museum's exhibitions and unparalleled gallery spaces with singular performances and talks. MetLiveArts invites artists, performers, curators, and thought-leaders to explore and collaborate within The Met, leading with new commissions, world premieres, and site-specific durational performances that have been named some of the most "Memorable" and "Best of" performances in New York City by the New York Times, New Yorker, and Broadway World. For more information and tickets, visit www.metmuseum.org/tickets or call 212-570-3949. Tickets are also available at the Great Hall Box Office, which is open Monday-Saturday, 11:00 a.m.-3:30 p.m.

*One full-price adult ticket allows you to purchase up to three kids' (ages 7-16) tickets for $1 each.