92NY to Present Pacifica Quartet in November

The 92nd Street Y, New York will present the Pacifica Quartet on Wednesday, November 13, 2024 at 7:30pm ET on the David Geffen Stage at Kaufmann Concert Hall and streaming online. Tickets start at $25.

The Grammy Award-winning Pacifica Quartet returns to the 92NY stage to perform American Snapshots: "JFK, Vietnam, and Ellis Island", a reflective program shaped around three pivotal chapters in American history. Opening with Barber's String Quartet in B Minor (that includes his moving Adagio for Strings), this first musical snapshot gives listeners the opportunity to reflect on November 25, 1963, when the Adagio for Strings brought a cathartic calm to a grieving nation as conducted by Toscanini at JFK's funeral. The second American snapshot is George Crumb's revolutionary work Black Angels "Thirteen Images from the Dark Land" that features an amplified string quartet, crystal glasses, thimbles, a glass stirring rod, and two suspended tam-tam gongs. Written as a threnody (ode or lament) to the Vietnam War in 1970, Black Angels was unforgettably championed by the Kronos Quartet and conceived as "a kind of parable on our troubled contemporary world" (Crumb 1971). The final snapshot points to the American immigrant experience, inspiring composers like Dvořák to create new styles and sounds based on America's rich musical landscape. From the song of the scarlet tanager to musical cadences of the African American spiritual, we experience the substantial impact of Dvořák's visit to Spillville, Iowa where he wrote his beloved "American" String Quartet.

The complete 92NY program will feature Barber's String Quartet in B Minor, Op. 11; George Crumb's Black Angels; and Dvořák's String Quartet No. 12 in F Major, Op. 96, "American."

Online streaming is also available for 72 hours following the performance.

With a career spanning three decades, the multiple Grammy Award-winning Pacifica Quartet has achieved international recognition as one of the finest chamber ensembles performing today. The Quartet is known for its virtuosity, exuberant performance style, and often-daring repertory choices. Having served as quartet-in-residence at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music for over a decade, the Quartet was also previously the quartet-in-residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2021, the Pacifica Quartet received a second Grammy Award for Contemporary Voices, an exploration of music by three Pulitzer Prize-winning composers: Shulamit Ran, Jennifer Higdon, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.

Formed in 1994, the Pacifica Quartet quickly won chamber music's top competitions, including the 1998 Naumburg Chamber Music Award. In 2002, the ensemble was honored with Chamber Music America's Cleveland Quartet Award and an appointment to Lincoln Center's The Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two), and in 2006 was awarded a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. With its powerful energy and captivating, cohesive sound, the Pacifica Quartet has established itself as the embodiment of the senior American quartet sound.

In 2008, the Quartet released its Grammy Award-winning recording of Carter's Quartets Nos. 1 and 5 on the Naxos label; the 2009 release of Quartets Nos. 2, 3, and 4 completed the two-CD set. Cedille Records released the group's four-CD recording of the entire Shostakovich cycle, paired with other contemporary Soviet works, to rave reviews: "The playing is nothing short of phenomenal" (Daily Telegraph, London). Other recent recording projects include Leo Ornstein's rarely heard piano quintet with Marc-André Hamelin with an accompanying tour, the Brahms piano quintet with the legendary late pianist Menahem Pressler, the Brahms and Mozart clarinet quintets with clarinetist Anthony McGill, and their Grammy Award-winning Contemporary Voices album.

For more information on the Quartet, please visit www.pacificaquartet.com.