Borromeo String Quartet, Arneis Quartet & Delgani String Quartet
Biographie Borromeo String Quartet, Arneis Quartet & Delgani String Quartet
Elena Ruehr
She has a major list of recordings including her orchestral works (O’Keeffe Images, BMOP Sound) as well as the opera Toussaint Before the Spirits (Arsis Records), her cantatas Averno (with the Trinity Choir, Julian Wachner, Avie), and her Six String Quartets (the Cypress String Quartet, Borromeo Quartet and Stephen Salters, Avie). Her other recordings include Jane Wang considers the Dragonfly (Albany), Lift (Avie), Shimmer (Metamorphosen Chamber Ensemble on Albany) and Shadow Light (The New Orchestra of Washington with Marcus Thompson, Acis), as well as many others.
Her works have been commissioned and performed by numerous string quartets, including the Arneis, Biava, Borromeo, Delgani, Lark, Quartet Nouveau, Roco and Shanghai string quartets. An award winning faculty member at MIT, she has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute and composer-in-residence with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Known for her vocal music and collaboration with poets, she has written four operas, four cantatas and a number of songs. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the Juilliard School, and has also written extensively for chamber ensemble, orchestra, chorus, wind ensemble, instrumental solo, opera, dance and silent film. Currently she is writing an opera for Guerilla Opera. Her work has been described as “sumptuously scored and full of soaring melodies” (The New York Times), and “unspeakably gorgeous” (Gramophone).
Dr. Ruehr has taught at MIT since 1992 and lives in Boston with her husband and daughter.
Borromeo String Quartet
Each visionary performance of the award-winning Borromeo String Quartet strengthens and deepens its reputation as one of the most important ensembles of our time. Admired and sought after for both its fresh interpretations of the classical music canon and its championing of works by 20th and 21st century composers, the ensemble has been hailed for its “edge-of-the- seat performances,” by the Boston Globe, which called it “simply the best.”
Inspiring audiences for more than 25 years, the Borromeo continues to be a pioneer in its use of technology, and has the trailblazing distinction of being the first string quartet to utilize laptop computers on the concert stage. Reading music this way helps push artistic boundaries, allowing the artists to perform solely from 4-part scores and composers’ manuscripts, a revealing and metamorphic experience which these dedicated musicians now teach to students around the world. As the New York Times noted, “The digital tide washing over society is lapping at the shores of classical music. The Borromeo players have embraced it in their daily musical lives like no other major chamber music group.” Moreover, the Quartet often leads discussions enhanced by projections of handwritten manuscripts, investigating with the audience the creative process of the composer. And in 2003 the Borromeo became the first classical ensemble to make its own live concert recordings and videos, distributing them for many years to audiences through its Living Archive, a music learning web portal for which a new version will soon be released.
Passionate educators, the Borromeos encourage audiences of all ages to explore and listen to both traditional and contemporary repertoire in new ways. The ensemble uses multi-media tools such as video projection to share the often surprising creative process behind some works, or to show graphically the elaborate architecture behind others. This produces delightfully refreshing viewpoints and has been a springboard for its acclaimed young people’s programs. One such program is MATHEMUSICA which delves into the numerical relationships that under-pin the sounds of music and show how musical syntax mirrors natural forms. CLASSIC VIDEO uses one movement of a quartet as the platform from which to teach computer drawing, video editing, animation, musical form and production processes to create a meaningful joining of music and visual art.
The BSQ has been ensemble-in-residence at the New England Conservatory and Taos School of Music, both for 25 years, and has, for over two decades, enjoyed a long-term relationship with the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum where it continues to regularly appear. It is quartet-in-residence at the Heifetz International Music Institute, where first violinist Nicholas Kitchen is Artistic Director. The quartet was also in residence at, and has worked extensively as performers and educators with the Library of Congress (highlighting both its manuscripts and instrument collections) and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. The ensemble joined the Emerson Quartet as the Hittman Ensembles in Residence at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, and was recently was in residence at Kansas University, the San Francisco Conservatory, and Colorado State University, where it regularly appears.
The BSQ’s presentation of the cycle of Bartók String Quartets as well as its lecture “BARTÓK: PATHS NOT TAKEN,” both of which give audiences a once-in-a-lifetime chance to hear a set of rediscovered alternate movements Béla Bartók drafted for his six Quartets, has received accolades. Describing a Bartók concert at the Curtis Institute, the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that the quartet “performed at a high standard that brought you so deeply into the music's inner workings that you wondered if your brain could take it all in ... The music's mystery, violence, and sorrow become absolutely inescapable.”
Also noteworthy in the BSQ repertory are its dramatic discoveries within the manuscripts of the Beethoven Quartets, and its performances of the COMPLETE CYCLE; the BEETHOVEN DECATHLON (four concerts of Beethoven’s last ten quartets, all with pre-concert lectures exploring his manuscripts); and single BEETHOVEN TRYPTICH concerts (one concert including three quartets). Its expansive repertoire also includes the Shostakovich Cycle and those of Mendelssohn, Dvořák, Brahms, Schumann, Schoenberg, Janáček, Lera Auerbach, Tchaikovsky, and Gunther Schuller.
The Quartet has collaborated with some of this generation’s most important composers, including Gunther Schuller, John Cage, György Ligeti, Steve Reich, Aaron Jay Kernis, Osvaldo Golijov, Jennifer Higdon, Steve Mackey, John Harbison, Sebastian Currier, and Leon Kirchner, among many others; and has performed on major concert stages across the globe, including appearances at Carnegie Hall, the Berlin Philharmonie, Wigmore Hall, Suntory Hall (Tokyo), the Concertgebouw, Seoul Arts Center, Shanghai Oriental Arts Center, the Incontri in Terra di Siena Chamber Music Festival in Tuscany, Kammermusik Basel (Switzerland), the Prague Spring Festival, and the Haydn Festival in Eisenstadt.
The group recently premiered new works written for it by Sebastian Currier and Aaron Jay Kernis at recitals at Carnegie Hall, Shriver Concerts, and the Tippet Rise Art Center. The ensemble continues to perform violinist Nicholas Kitchen's transcriptions of Bach’s Goldberg Variations and the Well-Tempered Clavier Bk. I, the latter of which the BSQ recently released an acclaimed premiere recording which hit the billboard charts.
“Nothing less than masterful” (Cleveland.com), the Borromeo Quartet has received numerous awards throughout its illustrious career, including Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Career Grant and Martin E. Segal Award, and Chamber Music America’s Cleveland Quartet Award. It was also a recipient of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions and a prize-winner at the International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France.
Arneis Quartet
The Arneis Quartet performs an eclectic range of programs from the standard to contemporary, including commissions of new works and interdisciplinary collaborations in New England and throughout the world. Known for playing with “a conviction that commands attention” (Fanfare) and “a unique collective sound which is as warm and full of sparkle as liquid gold” (Boston Musical Intelligencer), the quartet is playfully named after the Arneis grape—a varietal that is difficult to grow, but which yields an exquisite white wine. The Boston-based Arneis Quartet has brought their energetic approach and adventurous programming to traditional concert venues as well as salon-style concerts and community engagement activities since 2009.
Arneis has received critical acclaim for their ongoing Poetry and Music Series, performing musical works inspired by poetry and song with vocalists Tony Arnold, Charles Blandy, David Kravitz, and Krista River. They have performed all or portions of the series at MIT, Boston University, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Swarthmore College, and have commissioned new works to further the genre. The Quartet has performed in Shostakovich presentations with New York Times bestselling author M.T. Anderson. They continue to perform each season as part of Emmanuel Music‘s Chamber Series and Late Night at Emmanuel, and have recently made their debut at concert series such as the Harvard Musical Association, Portland Bach Experience, Wellesley College’s Midday Muse, and WordSong. The 2018-2019 season includes a residency at MIT; performances with pianist Joy Cline Phinney and bandoneonist Julien Labro; a premiere of a new work by Aaron Travers (written for Arneis and Tony Arnold); and a collaboration with the Concord (NH) Chorale and composer Nicholas White.
Committed to community engagement and music education, the Quartet has worked with music students at the Boston Arts Academy, Perkins School for the Blind, and the Boston Public Schools. Outside of their Boston home, Arneis has taught master classes and served as a residency quartet at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, Point Counterpoint, Swarthmore College and Lyceum Music Festival. They have brought their outreach and education programs to communities in California, Michigan, Ohio, and Reggio Emilia, Italy. Arneis performs several times a year at retirement communities throughout the greater Boston area. Quartet members are on the faculties of Boston University and St. Anselm College; the Quartet also works with the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras where they are the resident chamber music coaches and work with students in the Intensive Community Program.
All alumni of Boston University, the Arneis Quartet has worked with members of the Muir, St. Lawrence, Cleveland, Lydian, Brentano, Emerson and Juilliard quartets. Arneis Quartet has performed with guest artists including the St. Lawrence String Quartet, Marc Johnson, Pamela Dellal, Peter Zazofsky, Ursula Holliger, Jessica Zhou, Kevin Loucks, Michelle LaCourse, and Gabriel Kahane.
Winners of the 2010 John Lad Prize and silver medal at the 2012 International Chamber Music Ensemble Competition, the Quartet has received fellowships at the Aspen Center for Advanced String Quartet Studies and the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music; other festivals attended include the Juilliard Quartet Seminar, the Deer Valley Emerging Quartets and Composers Program, and the Banff Centre Chamber Music Residency. Committed to new music, they have received a grant from Meet the Composer, performed at the Beijing Modern Music Festival and the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. The Quartet has been featured at the Modulus Festival in Vancouver and Lively Arts Series at Stanford University. A recording of the chamber music of composer John H. Wallace, “Arneis Quartet and Friends”, was released in 2016 on Centaur Records to critical acclaim.
Delgani String Quartet
Considered “the state’s finest chamber ensemble” by Oregon Arts Watch, the Delgani String Quartet presents exciting performances of both classic and contemporary repertoire in intimate concert settings. The quartet curates their own subscription series in Portland, Salem, and Eugene while regularly appearing as guest artists throughout the state. Delgani has also performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC and at Charles University in Prague.
Delgani’s upcoming 2021/2022 Subscription Series celebrates the music of today with a compelling contemporary work on every program: Reza Vali’s String Quartet No. 3 (2001), John Luther Adams’ The Wind in High Places (2011), Gabriela Lena Frank’s Leyendas (2001), and Elena Ruehr’s String Quartet No. 3 (2001). Each of these works will be performed alongside standards from the canon resulting in four unique programs.
Committed to community engagement, Delgani provides educational opportunities to students throughout the Willamette Valley. The quartet’s Classical Spark program brings the string quartet to third grade classrooms in Lane County to foster an early interest in music. During the last two years, Delgani has held residencies with student composers at the University of Oregon. In previous seasons the quartet has held residencies at Umpqua Community College and the Springfield Academy of Arts and Academics. Each summer, Delgani manages for middle and high school students — a Chamber Music Camp for all instruments in Eugene and a Summer Quartet Academy in Cottage Grove, Oregon. Delgani also hosts biannual Adult Chamber Music Workshops for amateur enthusiasts and curates an adult education series prior to each subscription series concert.
Delgani was formed in 2014 with a mission to cultivate an appreciation for chamber music through distinctive performance, innovative programming, educational engagement, and collaboration. The organization operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and has received foundation support from the Oregon Cultural Trust, Oregon Community Foundation, Oregon Arts Commission, Lane Arts Council, Springfield Arts Commission, and Springfield Education Foundation. Delgani is the recipient of consecutive Cultural Development Grants from OCT and consecutive Creative Heights Grant from OCF.
The musicians of Delgani are violinists Anthea Kreston and Jannie Wei, violist Kimberlee Uwate, and cellist Eric Alterman. They have performed throughout the United States and internationally. Collectively they hold twelve degrees in performance from various schools of music and conservatories across the nation.
