Musicians

TODD CROW, Music Director and Pianist of the Mt. Desert Festival of Chamber Music since 1996 and Professor Emeritus of Music at Vassar College, has performed extensively in the United States, South America and Europe playing regularly in the major halls of New York, London and elsewhere. He made his Carnegie Hall debut in 1992 as soloist with the American Symphony, and his London orchestral debut at the Barbican Centre with the London Philharmonic in 1986. Among his CDs are recordings of sonatas by Haydn and Schubert, Liszt’s transcription of Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique,” “Todd Crow: The BBC Recordings, Vols. 1 and 2” (featuring various composers), and most recently a solo CD of 21 Chopin Mazurkas. “Heroic…Mr. Crow showed endless flair, color and stamina.” – THE NEW YORK TIMES

For over twenty years, the MIAMI STRING QUARTET has been one of America’s top-rank chamber ensembles. Highlights of recent seasons include performances in New York at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, the 92nd Street Y, and the Kennedy Center, as well as engagements in Philadelphia, Boston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, New Orleans, San Francisco, Seattle, and St. Paul. International highlights include appearances in Bern, Cologne, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Lausanne, Montreal, Rio de Janeiro, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Paris. The Quartet has served as resident ensemble at the Kent/Blossom Music Festival, and has appeared at Chamber Music Northwest, Mostly Mozart, Ravinia, the Brevard Festival, Rutgers Summerfest, Music from Angel Fire, Virginia Arts Festival, and the festivals of La Jolla, Santa Fe, and Pensacola. Formed in 1988, the Quartet has also won recognition as laureates of the 1993 Evian Competition, 1992 Concert Artists Guild Competition, 1991 London String Quartet Competition, and as the 1989 Grand Prize Winner of the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. Winners of the 2000 Cleveland Quartet Award and Chamber Music Society Two ensemble of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center from 1999-2001, the Miami String Quartet has been in residence at Hugh A. Glauser School of Music at Kent State University since 2004. The Miami String Quartet has commissioned and premiered works from (Bruce) Adolphe to (Ellen Taaffe) Zwilich – as well as Ricky Ian Gordon, Annie Gosfield, Philip Maneval, Roberto Sierra, Robert Starer, Augusta Read Thomas, Joan Tower, and Peteris Vasks. They have recorded music of Fauré, Saint-Saëns, Ginastera, and Vasks; their next recording project will be devoted to the music of Joan Tower.

STEPHANIE CHASE (Violin) has been a soloist with such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, San Francisco Symphony and the London Philharmonic. Chamber music appearances include concerts at Lincoln Center in New York, as a member of the Boston Chamber Music Society, and such festivals as Caramoor, Marlboro, and Kuhmo (Finland). She made her Carnegie Hall debut at age 18, was a top prize winner at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, and is a recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant.

DOV SCHEINDLIN (Viola), acclaimed by the NEW YORK TIMES as an “extraordinary violist of immense flair,” has been violist with the Arditti, Penderecki and Chester String Quartets. He has appeared as a soloist with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam and has performed in summer festivals in Salzburg, Lucerne and Tanglewood, and with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He is a member of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and associate member of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.

MARK SHUMAN (Cello) was a member of the Composers String Quartet, the founding resident quartet of the Mt. Desert Festival. He has been heard as chamber musician and soloist throughout the world. He was a founding member of the Aulos Ensemble, a period instrument group, a member of the New York City Opera Orchestra, and currently plays with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. His recordings include the complete cello sonatas of Mendelssohn with Todd Crow.

Named one of the greatest string quartets of the last 100 years by BBC Music Magazine and “the next Guarneri Quartet” by the Chicago Tribune, the two-time GRAMMY-nominated DOVER QUARTET is one of the world’s most in-demand chamber ensembles. The group’s awards include a stunning sweep of all prizes at the 2013 Banff International String Quartet Competition, grand and first prizes at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, and prizes at the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition. Its honors include the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, Chamber Music America’s Cleveland Quartet Award, and Lincoln Center’s Hunt Family Award. The Dover Quartet is the Penelope P. Watkins Ensemble in Residence at the Curtis Institute of Music and Quartet in Residence at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music.

The Dover Quartet’s 2024-25 season includes premiere performances throughout North America of newly commissioned works by Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate, a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and a leading composer of American Indian classical music; collaborative performances with preeminent artists that include pianists Michelle Cann, Marc-André Hamelin, and Haochen Zhang; and tours to Europe and Asia. Recent collaborators of the sought-after ensemble include Leif Ove Andsnes, Emanuel Ax, Inon Barnatan, Ray Chen, Anthony McGill, Edgar Meyer, the Pavel Haas Quartet, Roomful of Teeth, and Davóne Tines. The quartet has also recently premiered works by Mason Bates, Steven Mackey, Marc Neikrug, and Chris Rogerson.

The Dover Quartet’s highly acclaimed three-volume recording, Beethoven Complete String Quartets (Cedille Records), was hailed as “meticulously balanced, technically clean-as-a-whistle and intonationally immaculate” (The Strad). The quartet’s discography also includes Encores (Brooklyn Classical), a recording of 10 popular movements from the string quartet repertoire; The Schumann Quartets (Azica Records), which was nominated for a GRAMMY for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance; Voices of Defiance: 1943, 1944, 1945 (Cedille Records); and an all-Mozart debut recording (Cedille Records), featuring Michael Tree, the late, long-time violist of the Guarneri Quartet. The quartet’s recording of Steven Mackey’s theatrical-musical work Memoir, recorded with the percussion group arx duo and narrator Natalie Christa Rakes, was released on Bridge Records in August 2024. A recording of the Tate commissions and Dvořák’s String Quartet in F major, Op. 96 (“American”) will be released in 2025 on Curtis Studio, the record label of the Curtis Institute of Music.

The Dover Quartet draws from the lineage of the distinguished Guarneri, Cleveland, and Vermeer quartets. Its members studied at the Curtis Institute of Music, Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, the New England Conservatory, and the Conservatoire Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris. They were mentored extensively by Shmuel Ashkenasi, James Dunham, Norman Fischer, Kenneth Goldsmith, Joseph Silverstein, Arnold Steinhardt, Michael Tree, and Peter Wiley. The Dover Quartet was formed at Curtis in 2008; its name pays tribute to Dover Beach by fellow Curtis alumnus Samuel Barber.

The Dover Quartet proudly endorses Thomastik-Infeld strings.

With a career spanning over three decades, the BRENTANO QUARTET has appeared throughout the world to popular and critical acclaim. The New York Times extols its “luxuriously warm sound [and] yearning lyricism; and the Times (London) hails their “wonderful, selfless music-making.” Known for its unique sensibility, probing interpretive style, and original programming, the Quartet has performed across five continents in the world’s most prestigious venues and festivals, thus establishing itself as one of the world’s preeminent ensembles.

Dedicated and highly sought after as educators, the Quartet has served as Artists[1]in-Residence at the Yale School of Music for the past decade. They also lead the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and appear regularly at the Taos School of Music. Previously, the Quartet served for fifteen years as Ensemble-in-Residence at Princeton University.

In the 2024-25 concert season, the Quartet will premiere a program called “Evocations of Home,” featuring a new work by Lei Liang in honor of the late composer Chou Wen-chung. In spring 2025, they will perform Haydn’s complete Op. 33 quartets at New York’s Carnegie Hall and in several other U.S. cities. Other recent projects include “Dido Reimagined,” a monodrama for quartet and voice with soprano Dawn Upshaw, composed by Pulitzer-winning composer Melinda Wagner and librettist Stephanie Fleischmann, as well as a viola quintet, “Heart Speaks to Heart,” by composer James MacMillan.

Formed in 1992, The Brentano Quartet has received numerous accolades, including, in 1995, the prestigious Naumburg and Cleveland Quartet Awards. They have been privileged to collaborate with such artists as soprano Jessye Norman and mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, as well as pianists Mitsuko Uchida and Jonathan Biss.

The Quartet has commissioned works from some of the most important composers of our time, including Bruce Adolphe, Matthew Aucoin, Gabriela Frank, Stephen Hartke, Vijay Iyer, Steven Mackey, and Charles Wuorinen. The Quartet’s notable recordings include Beethoven’s Quartet, Op. 131 (Aeon) which was featured in the 2012 film “A Late Quartet,” starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Christopher Walken, and a 2017 live album with Joyce DiDonato, Image by Jürgen Frank “Into the Fire—Live from Wigmore Hall” (Warner.) Their most recent release features the K. 428 and K. 465 (“Dissonance”) Quartets of Mozart for the Azica label.

The Quartet is named for Antonie Brentano, whom many scholars consider to be Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved,” the intended recipient of his famous love confession.

Praised for their “virtuosity, visceral expression, and rare unity of intention” (Boston Globe), the VIANO QUARTET are one of the most sought-after performing young ensembles today and currently in-residence at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Bowers Program from 2024-2027. Since soaring to international acclaim as the First Prize winner at the 13th Banff International String Quartet Competition, they have traveled to nearly every major city across the globe, captivating audiences in New York, London, Berlin, Hong Kong, Vancouver, Paris, Beijing, Toronto, Lucerne, and Los Angeles.

During the 24/25 season, the quartet will debut in New York’s Alice Tully Hall in the season opening concert of CMS Lincoln Center, followed by appearances at series including Wolf Trap, Tuesday Evening Concert Series, Northwestern University, Four Arts in FL, MoCA Westport in CT, Chamber Music Yellow Springs in OH, and the chamber music societies of Dallas, Salt Lake City, and Carmel. In November, the quartet will also make their debut in David Geffen Hall with Sir Stephen Hough for the world premiere of his new piano quintet. The quartet can be heard in Canada this season with debuts at the Cecilian Chamber Series as well as the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and Isabel Bader PAC in Kingston in a program with famed guitarist Miloš Karadaglić. As the inaugural June Goldsmith Quartet-in-Residence for the Music in the Morning series through the 24/25 season, the quartet will return to Vancouver this Marchf or concerts and extensive community engagement initiatives.

In addition to their busy touring schedule, the quartet are also dedicated advocates of music education, and have worked with students at Music@Menlo, SUNY Buffalo, the Colburn Academy, Duke University, University of British Columbia, Northern Michigan University, Utah State University, University of Denver, and Virginia Commonwealth University. This season, they will be returning to University of Victoria for several weeks of residency which will include performances, master classes and lectures. The quartet has previously held graduate quartet residencies at Curtis and Colburn and were also the Peak Fellowship Quartet-in-Residence at Meadows School of the Arts at SMU.

The Viano Quartet has collaborated with world-class musicians including Emanuel Ax, Inon Barnatan, Fleur Barron, James Ehnes, Mahan Esfahani, Marc-André Hamelin, Bridget Kibbey, Paul Neubauer, David Shifrin, and Elisso Virsaladze. 2023 marked the release of the quartet’s first album Portraits on the Curtis Label, featuring pieces by Schubert, Florence Price, Tchaikovsky, and Ginastera.

In their formative years the quartet sustained unwavering enthusiasm from every international jury, never entering a major competition without capturing a top prize. Before their career-defining achievement at the Banff International String Quartet Competition, they also received major prizes at the Wigmore Hall, Osaka, Fischoff, ENKOR, and Yellow Springs Chamber Music Competitions. Each member of the quartet is grateful to the interminable support from their distinguished mentors at the Curtis Institute and Colburn Conservatory, including members of the Dover, Guarneri, and Tokyo string quartets.

The name “Viano” was created to describe the four individual instruments in a string quartet interacting as one. Each of the four instruments begins with the letter “v”, and like a piano, all four string instruments together play both harmony and melody, creating a unified instrument called the “Viano”.