The Escher String Quartet has received acclaim for its individual sound and unique cohesiveness. The quartet has performed at prestigious venues and festivals across the United States and abroad, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, 92nd Street Y and Symphony Space in New York, Boston's Gardner Museum, The Louvre in Paris, Dallas Chamber Music Society, Fortas Series at the Kennedy Center, New Orleans Friends of Music, University of Colorado at Boulder, Orange County Performing Arts Center and the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, as well as at the Ravinia, Santa Fe Chamber Music, Gold Coast and Caramoor Festivals, Music@Menlo and La Jolla SummerFest. The quartet recently served its third season as resident ensemble of Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's "CMS Two" program and has collaborated with such eminent artists as Andrés Diaz, Lawrence Dutton, Kurt Elling, Leon Fleisher, Lynn Harrell, Wu Han, Jeffrey Kahane, Joseph Kalichstein, Pepe Romero, pop folk singer-songwriter Luke Temple, David Shifrin, and Pinchas Zukerman. Within months of its inception in 2005, the Escher was invited by both Pinchas Zukerman and Itzhak Perlman to be quartet-in-residence at each artist's summer festival.
The 2010-2011 season features appearances at the World Science Festival and Symphony Space in New York, as well as a program of concerti and chamber music with the Little Orchestra Society in Carnegie Hall's Zankel Auditorium. The Escher perform several concerts with guest artists this season, notably Des Moines Arts Center with David Shifrin (clarinet) and Newtown Friends of Music with Jason Vieaux (guitar). Additional North American engagements will be Shriver Hall in Baltimore, Haverford College in PA, Concerts at the Point in Westport Point, MA, and chamber music series in Chicago, Cincinnati, Ottawa, Austin, Hudson Valley, Wooster, Yellow Springs, Williamsburg, and with the New Orleans Friends of Music at Tulane University. International engagements take the Escher to the West Cork Festival in Ireland, Festival of San Miguel de Allende in Mexico, and the Louvre Museum in Paris, with an extensive tour of China in May 2011.
In Spring 2011, the Escher will begin recording the complete Zemlinsky quartets for Naxos, supported by the Zemlinsky Foundation, with plans to record the complete Mendelssohn quartets for BIS. Their most recent recording (released in March 2010) for Bridge Records is Stony Brook Soundings, Vol. 1, featuring the quartet in the premiere recordings of five new works by Daniel A. Weymouth, Max Giteck Duykers, Ilari Kaila, Eugene Drucker (of the Emerson String Quartet) and Perry Goldstein -- four of them quintets with a guest artist. Previous albums include 2008's Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center - a recording of Amy Beach's Piano Quintet and Alan Louis Smith's "Vignettes: Covered Wagon Woman" -- and 2007's Bridging the Ages from Music@Menlo, featuring a Boccherini Guitar Quintet, Mendelssohn String Quartet and Bottesini's "Gran duo concertante". Also recorded for Music@Menlo are Stravinsky's Three Pieces for String Quartet, Purcell's "Fantasia upon One Note", Haydn's String Quartet in B-Flat Major, Op. 76 No. 4 ("Sunrise"), Shostakovitch's String Octet, Gruenberg's "Four Diversions", and Wolf's Italian Serenade in G Major.
The Escher has served as the Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence in Caramoor - where they performed "String Quartet #4", their first commissioned work by Pierre Jalbert - and from 2007 to 2009 joined the faculty of Stony Brook University as Visiting Artist-in-Residence in a unique relationship with the world-renowned Emerson String Quartet.
The ensemble takes its name from Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher and draws inspiration from the artist's method of interplay between individual components working together to form a whole.
Adam Barnett-Hart (Violin); Wu Jie (Violin);
Pierre Lapointe (Viola); Dane Johansen (Cello)
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AUGUST 2010-PLEASE DESTROY ANY PREVIOUSLY DATED MATERIALS