Colburn School Alumni Calidore String Quartet Win 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant

The Colburn School congratulates the Calidore String Quartet, winners of the 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant. This award gives professional assistance and recognition in the amount of $25,000 to young musicians for the purpose of career advancement.

The Calidore String Quartet joins 2014 winner The Calder Quartet and 2015 winner Simone Porter, all Colburn School alumni, as recipients of this prestigious honor.

The Calidore String Quartet-comprising Conservatory of Music graduates violinists Jeffrey Myers and Ryan Meehan, violist Jeremy Berry, and cellist Estelle Choi-formed at the Colburn School in 2010, and were the first artists in the Colburn Artists program to sign with a major agency, Opus 3, and the first to have a critically acclaimed debut album produced and distributed by the Colburn School. Colburn School's Colburn Artists program provides students with professional career services and training, as well as access to established artist management, to prepare students for solo or chamber careers.

The Calidore String Quartet has been praised by the New York Times for its "deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct" and by the Los Angeles Times for its balance of "intellect and expression." After their Kennedy Center debut the Washington Post proclaimed that "Four more individual musicians are unimaginable, yet these speak, breathe, think and feel as one ... The grateful audience left enriched and, I suspect, a little more human than it arrived." David Finckel of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center calls the Calidore a "dynamic and intelligent ensemble who have already demonstrated skill and maturity beyond their collective years, showing seemingly endless potential." That potential has been recognized over the course of the past two years as the Calidore has enjoyed an impressive number of accolades, including the 2017 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, the 2016 and inaugural Grand Prize of the M-Prize International Chamber Music Competition, and the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship. The Calidore was also named BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists and they are currently in residence with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's CMS Two program. The Quartet gets its name from an amalgamation of "California" and "doré" (French for "golden"). The ensemble's name represents a reverence for the diversity of culture and the strong support it received from its home of origin, Los Angeles, California, the "golden state."

Since 1976, 149 Career Grants have been awarded (including this year's grants), and all recipients are currently active musicians. Former Career Grant recipients include pianists Jonathan Biss and Yuja Wang; clarinetist Anthony McGill; violinists James Ehnes and Hilary Hahn; and The Dover Quartet.

The Avery Fisher Artist Program, established by the late Avery Fisher as part of a major gift to Lincoln Center in 1974, serves as a monument to Mr. Fisher's philanthropy and love of music. The Career Grants in particular exemplify his devotion to helping young artists and embody his philosophy to give back to the world what music had given to him. The program supporting instrumentalists and chamber ensembles who must be U.S. citizens or permanent U.S. residents continues to provide recognition in two categories: The Career Grants, given annually, and the Prize, given less frequently as the highest form of recognition for excellence and contributions to classical music. The Avery Fisher Artist Program is committed to all forms of diversity, with award recipients being chosen based on outstanding artistic merit. Final selections are made by the Program's Executive Committee.

Avery Fisher Career Grants of the Avery Fisher Artist Program are designed to give professional assistance and recognition to talented instrumentalists, as well as chamber ensembles, who the Recommendation Board and Executive Committee of the Avery Fisher Artist Program believe to have great potential for major careers. Each recipient receives an award of $25,000, to be used for specific needs in advancing a career. Additionally, the Career Grant ceremony performances are professionally recorded for the recipients' unrestricted use, posted on the Program's website, broadcast and webstreamed by WQXR and used by WNET Thirteen's NYC Arts. As of 2016, recipients also receive a custom designed blue and gold rosette, given as a physical symbol of the Career Grant award. Up to five Avery Fisher Career Grants may be given each year. Recipients are nominated by the Program's Recommendation Board, made up of nationally known instrumentalists, conductors, composers, music educators, managers and presenters.

About the Colburn School

The Colburn School comprises four academic units united by a single philosophy that all who desire to study music and dance should have access to top-level training. The degree-granting Conservatory of Music, the Community School of Performing Arts, the Music Academy for pre-college musicians, and the Trudl Zipper Dance Institute provide performing arts training to over 2,000 students from the Los Angeles area and around the world. The renowned teachers, performers, and scholars that make up Colburn's dedicated faculty serve as invaluable mentors to guide students' artistic development.

The Community School of Performing Arts acts as an entry point to performing-arts education, offering beginning to pre-collegiate training in music to students of all ages and skill levels. The Trudl Zipper Dance Institute includes dance instruction for young people and adults in ballet, tap, modern, and musical theater. Also part of the Trudl Zipper Dance Institute is the pre-professional Dance Academy, which prepares a select class of young dancers for careers in ballet.

Young musicians from around the world study at the Music Academy, which prepares high-school aged students for further training at the world's top conservatories. Finally, the Conservatory of Music is one of the preeminent training grounds for classical musicians, with undergraduate and advanced degrees in music performance.

A robust community engagement program delivers performing arts education to low-income students in the surrounding areas. In addition, Colburn offers over $500,000 in scholarships to Community School students each year. Located in downtown Los Angeles, the Colburn School's campus boasts state-of-the-art performance and rehearsal spaces. Each season, the school presents over 300 concerts and performances, many of which are free and open to the public, at its downtown home and throughout Southern California

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