The Arianna String Quartet, one of America’s finest chamber ensembles, will perform on Friday, Feb. 20 as part of the Grundy County Friends of the Arts 2003-2004 program.
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The Arianna String Quartet, one of America’s finest chamber ensembles, will perform on Friday, Feb. 20 as part of the Grundy County Friends of the Arts 2003-2004 program.
The program will take place at 7 p.m. in the Hoover Community Theater, located on the third floor of the Grundy County-Jewett Norris Library. Sponsored by the Friends of the Arts and North Central Missouri College, admission is free to all Friends of the Arts season ticketholders as well as NCMC students with proper identification. General admission is $5.
Formed in 1992, the ASQ captured the grand prize in the 1994 Fischoff National Chamber Music competition and first prize in both the Coleman and Carmel national competitions. They were also Finalists in the 1999 Bordeaux International String Quartet competition. From 1993-1996, the Arianna Quartet studied with the Vermeer Quartet at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, IL.
The quartet has performed throughout the United States, Mexico, Japan, Canada and France and has given successful debuts at Orchestra Hall in Chicago and Tokyo’s Suntory Hall. They have collaborated with renowned artists and recorded for the Centaur, Albany, and Urtext classical labels.
The Arianna String Quartet has been featured in concerts at the Spoleto, Banff, Norfolk, and Strings in the Mountains festivals, was Ensemble-in-Residence at the Tanglewood Music Center, and was invited by Isaac Stern to perform in his first-ever Carnegie Hall master classes. They have been heard on live nationally broadcast performances in Osaka, Japan, and on Canada’s CBC radio, several times as part of Chicago’s prestigious Dame Myra Hess Series, and on National Public Radio’s “Performance Today” program. After being awarded a Chamber Music America Residency Grant in 1996, the Arianna String Quartet, steeped in the belief that today’s youth is tomorrow’s audience, performed more than four hundred outreach concerts in four years in southeast Michigan as Eastern Michigan University’s quartet-in-residence.
In 2003, the ASQ was a recipient of a Chamber Music America Residency Grant for their outreach work in St. Louis. The quartet was recently appointed Faculty Artist Teachers and Quartet-in-Residence in the music department at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
Violinist John McGrosso has appeared as soloist with the Chicago Symphony and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Juilliard, and holds a Performer’s Certificate from Northern Illinois University. He has studied chamber music with members of the Juilliard, Tokyo and Vermeer quartets. McGrosso was a member of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra from 1992 to 1999. He joined the Arianna String Quartet in 1998.
Violinist Rebecca Rhee is a native of Hawaii, where she began violin studies at the age of 10. She went on to study at the University of Southern California with Eudice Shapiro and Milton Thomas and has also studied with Shmuel Ashkenasi at Northern Illinois University. Ms. Rhee has appeared as a soloist with the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra and Honolulu Youth Symphony, and has performed in many music festivals, including Tanglewood, Norfolk, Kent/Blossom and Strings in the Mountains. As a founding member of the Arianna String Quartet, she has concertized throughout the United States and Japan.
Violist Robert Meyer began playing the viola in the public school strings program in New Rochelle, NY. While in high school, he studied at the Manhattan School of Music and holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Rice University in Houston, TX. An experienced and versatile chamber musician, Meyer was a founding member of the New Fromm Players, a contemporary music ensemble in residence at the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, MA. He performed from 2001 to 2003 as the Assistant Principal Violist of the Richmond Symphony, where he was active in the symphony’s outreach programs.
Kurt Baldwin began his Cello studies in Iowa City, IA, in the public schools at the age of 12. He received his bachelor of music degree from the San Francisco Conservatory, where he studied with Irene Sharp. He then earned a master of music degree from the New England Conservatory, studying with Bernard Greenhouse, and a Performer’s Certificate from Northern Illinois University studying with Marc Johnson. As a founding member of the Arianna String Quartet, Mr. Baldwin has won grand prizes in the Fischoff, Coleman and Carmel competitions, and has given concerts throughout the United States and Japan. For several summers, Baldwin was the principal cellist of the Spoleto Festival in Italy and the United States.
The performance is partially funded by a grant from the Missouri Arts Council.