Miró Quartet at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

The Miró Quartet, one of America’s most celebrated string quartets, makes its Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts debut, with a program featuring Home, Pulitzer-Prize-winning composer Kevin Puts’ vivid and absorbing musical portrayal of the journeys undertaken by refugees, on Saturday, May 20, 2023, 7:30 pm, at The Wallis’ Bram Goldsmith Theater. Home, completed in 2019, marks the string quartet’s third collaboration with Puts, who is acclaimed for his richly colored, harmonic, and freshly melodic musical voice. The program opens with Mozart’s String Quartet in C Major, K. 456, “Dissonance,” and also includes Schuberts’ Andante con moto from String Quartet in D Minor, D. 810 “Death and the Maiden”; Schumann’s Scherzo from String Quartet A Minor, Op. 41, No. 1; and Brahm’s String Quartet No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 51, No. 1. Members of the Miró Quartet are Daniel Ching, violin; William Fedkenheuer, violin; John Largess, viola; Joshua Gindele, cello. Preludes @ the Wallis, a conversation with the artists and Puts moderated by Classical California KUSC’s Brian Lauritzen, begins at 6:30 PM.

For 25 years the Miró has performed a wide range of repertoire that pays homage to the legacy of the string quartet while looking forward to the future of chamber music by commissioning new works and collaborating with some of today’s most important artists. Based in Austin, TX, and thriving on the area’s storied music scene, the Miró, which has performed on the world’s most prestigious concert stages, takes pride in finding new ways to communicate with audiences of all backgrounds. Committed to music education, the ensemble has served as quartet-in-residence at the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas, Austin since 2003; additionally members of the Quartet have given master classes at universities and conservatories around the world. Formed in 1995, the Miró Quartet has been awarded first prize at several competitions including the Banff International String Quartet Competition and Naumburg Chamber Music Competition; and in 2005, became the first ensemble ever to be awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant. The Miró Quartet took its name and its inspiration from the Spanish artist Joan Miró, whose Surrealist works – with subject matter drawn from the realm of memory, dreams, and imaginative fantasy – are some of the most groundbreaking, influential, and admired of the 20th century.

Tickets, $39 to $99, are on sale now. The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts is located at 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd, Beverly Hills. To purchase tickets and for more information, please call 310-746-4000 or visit TheWallis.org/Miro.