Evolution: Chamber - Quartets, Piano Trios + Composers

Celebrating its 30th season, the Gryphon Trio is one of the world’s preeminent piano trios, garnering acclaim and impressing international audiences with its highly refined, dynamic and memorable performances.

With a repertoire that ranges from traditional to contemporary and from European classicism to modern-day multimedia, the Gryphons are committed to redefining chamber music for the 21st century.

Creative innovators with an appetite for discovery and new directions, the Gryphon Trio has commissioned over 100 new works, and frequently collaborates on projects that push the boundaries of chamber music. The trio tours regularly throughout North America and Europe, and their 22 recordings are an encyclopedia of works for the genre. Honours include three Juno Awards for Classical Album of the Year – most recently, that of 2019 – and the prestigious 2013 Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts from the Canada Council.

Deeply committed to music education and audience development, the Gryphons conduct master classes and workshops at universities and conservatories, and are artists-in-residence at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music and Trinity College. Dr. Jamie Parker is the Rupert E. Edwards Chair in Piano Performance and Annalee Patipatanakoon is Associate Professor of Violin and Head of Strings at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music.

Since 2010, the trio’s multi-faceted arts creation program Listen Up! has engaged elementary school students, teachers and parents in 16 Canadian communities and provided them with the experience and knowledge required to participate actively in the arts.

The Gryphon Trio has had a long association with the Ottawa Chamberfest – Roman Borys served as Artistic Director between 2007-2015, as Artistic and Executive Director between 2015-2021 and Patipatanakoon and Parker served as Artistic Advisors between 2008-2021. The Trio are currently Directors of Classical Music Summer programs at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

The Eybler Quartet came together in late 2004 to explore the works of the first century and a half of the string quartet, with a healthy attention to lesser known composers such as their namesake, Joseph Leopold Edler von Eybler. The group brings a unique combination of talents and skills: razor-sharp ensemble skills, technical prowess, expertise in period instrument performance and an unquenchable passion for the repertoire. The Toronto- based ensemble’s live performances have consistently garnered praise as “glowing and committed”, “spirited” and “lively and energizing”. Their recording of Joseph Haydn’s Op. 33 String Quartets for the Analekta label was called “simply a treasure” by Early Music America, “the tempos are beautifully chosen, the ensemble perfect, and the intonation absolutely pure. This is music-making that reflects the deeply human and attractive qualities found in Haydn the composer—good humor, wit, and invention.” Their recording with clarinetist Jane Booth won praise from Gramophone for being “totally engaging performances that breathe life into Backofen’s music”. Their Beethoven Quartets, Opus 18 nos. 1-3 garnered this praise from Gramophone: “…the revelations flood in: the swiftness with which the Eyblers take the great Adagio of Op 18 No 1 allows violinist Aisslinn Nosky’s almost vibrato-free period-instrument tone to sound breathtakingly fragile.” Violinists Julia Wedman and Patricia Ahern, and violist Patrick G. Jordan are members of Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra. Cellist Margaret Gay is much in demand as both a modern and period instrument player. This summer the group will again be on the faculty at the Banff Centre as part of the EQ: Evolution of the String Quartet program.

In September 2022 Patricia Ahern joined the group, replacing founding member Aisslinn Nosky.

Daniel Chong, violin | Ken Hamao, violin | Jessica Bodner, viola | Kee-Hyun Kim, cello

Internationally recognized for their “fearless, yet probingly beautiful” (The Strad) performances, the Grammy Award-winning Parker Quartet has rapidly distinguished itself as one of the preeminent ensembles of its generation, dedicated purely to the sound and depth of their music. Inspired performances and exceptional musicianship are hallmarks of the Quartet, having appeared at the world’s most illustrious venues since its founding in 2002.

Recent seasons included performances around the United States and Europe, including Wigmore Hall, Konzerthaus Berlin, Music Toronto, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Strathmore, San Antonio Chamber Music Society, University of Chicago, the Schubert Club, and Kansas City’s Friends of Chamber Music.

This season the Quartet marks their 20th anniversary with The Beethoven Project, a multi-faceted initiative which includes performances of the complete cycle of Beethoven’s string quartets; the commissioning of six composers to write encores inspired by Beethoven’s quartets; the creation of a new video library spotlighting each Beethoven quartet; and bringing Beethoven’s music to non-traditional venues around the Quartet’s home base of Boston, including homeless shelters and youth programs.

The Quartet is committed to working with composers of today — recent commissions include works by Augusta Read Thomas, Felipe Lara, Jaehyuck Choi, and Zosha di Castri. Celebrating the process of creation, the Quartet recorded three new commissions by Kate Soper, Oscar Bettison, and Vijay Iyer as part of Miller Theatre’s Mission: Commission podcast.

Additionally, the Quartet regularly collaborates with a diverse range of artists, including pianists Menahem Pressler, Orion Weiss, Shai Wosner, Billy Childs, and Vijay Iyer; members of the Silk Road Ensemble; clarinetist and composer Jörg Widmann; clarinetists Anthony McGill and Charles Neidich; flutist Claire Chase; and violist Kim Kashkashian, featured on their recent Dvořák recording. The Quartet also continues to be a strong supporter of Kashkashian’s project Music for Food, participating in concerts throughout the United States for the benefit of various food banks and shelters.

Recording projects continue to be an important facet of the Quartet’s artistic output. Described by Gramophone Magazine as a ”string quartet defined by virtuosity so agile that it’s indistinguishable from the process of emotional expression,” their newest release for ECM Records features Dvořák's Viola Quintet as well as György Kurtág's Six Moments Musicaux and Officium breve in memoriam. The Strad also declared the album as “nothing short of astonishing.” Under the auspices of the Monte Carlo Festival Printemps des Arts, they recorded a disc of three Beethoven quartets, of which Diapason “admired the group’s fearlessness, exceptional control, and attention to detail.” The Quartet can also be heard playing Mendelssohn on Nimbus Records, Bartók on Zig-Zag Territoires, and the complete Ligeti Quartets on Naxos, for which they won a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance.

The members of the Parker Quartet serve as Professors of the Practice and Blodgett Artists-in-Residence at Harvard University’s Department of Music. The Quartet also holds a visiting residency at the University of South Carolina and spends its summers on faculty at the Banff Centre’s Evolution: Quartet program.

Founded and currently based in Boston, the Parker Quartet’s numerous honors include winning the Concert Artists Guild Competition, the Grand Prix and Mozart Prize at France’s Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition, and Chamber Music America’s prestigious Cleveland Quartet Award.

Photo by Beowulf Sheehan

Hailed by The New York Times as “our leading new-music foursome”, the JACK Quartet is one of the most acclaimed, renowned, and respected experimental string quartets performing today. Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell, JACK operates as a nonprofit organization dedicated to the performance, commissioning, and appreciation of new string quartet music. The quartet was selected as Musical America’s 2018 “Ensemble of the Year”, nominated for GRAMMY Awards for recordings in 2018 & 2022, named to WQXR’s “19 for 19 Artists to Watch”, and awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant, as well as the Fromm Music Foundation Prize.

Through intimate relationships with today’s most creative voices, JACK embraces close collaboration with the composers they perform, leading to a radical embodiment of the technical, musical, and emotional aspects of their work. The quartet has worked with artists such as Julia Wolfe, George Lewis, Helmut Lachenmann, and Caroline Shaw, with upcoming and recent premieres including works by John Luther Adams, Catherine Lamb, Liza Lim, Tyshawn Sorey, Wadada Leo Smith, Amy Williams, and John Zorn. JACK’s all-access initiative, JACK Studio, funds collaborations with a selection of artists each year, who receive money, workshop time, mentorship, and resources to develop new works for string quartet.

Committed to education, JACK is the Quartet in Residence at the Mannes School of Music, where they provide mentorship to Mannes’s Cuker and Stern Graduate String Quartet. They also teach each summer at New Music on the Point, a contemporary chamber music festival in Vermont for young performers and composers, and at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. JACK has long-standing relationships with the University of Iowa String Quartet Residency Program, where they teach and collaborate with students each fall and spring, as well as with the Lucerne Festival Academy, of which the four members are all alumni.

Photo by Shervin Lainez

Suzanne Farrin is a composer whose works have been performed around the world. Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times called her first opera, dolce la morte, a work of “shattering honesty.” Her debut recording, Corpo di Terra, was described in Timeout Chicago, “like field recordings from inside the cerebral cortex.” Recent commissions include works for Talea Ensemble, The Library of Congress, Sō Percussion, JACK Quartet, and The International Contemporary Ensemble. She was a 2018 Rome Prize Winner and a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow in Composition.

In addition to composing, Suzanne is a performer of the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument created by the engineer Maurice Martenot in the 1920s as a response to the simultaneous destruction and technological advances of WWI. Her life as an interpreter on the instrument has taken her to venues such as the Abrons Arts Center in NYC, Centro de Artes in Buenos Aires, as well as film and television. She has performed in film scores such as Chicuarotes (Gael Garcia Bernal, director), Sade Ma’bar/Blockage (Mohsen Gharaie, director), and USERS (Natalia Almada, director), which was featured at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. She appears as herself in an episode of the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle (Roman Coppola, director).

Suzanne is the Frayda B. Lindemann Chair of Music at Hunter College and The C.U.N.Y. Graduate Center, where she teaches composition. She has been the lead mentor composer for Evolution: Quartet at the Banff Centre since 2021. She holds a doctorate in from Yale University. Her next opera, Macabéa, will be premiered at the Theatro São Pedro in São Paolo, Brazil in 2025 and is supported by the Siemens Foundation and the Consolate General of Brazil in New York.

Suzannah Clark, AKC, BMus, MMus, MFA, MA, PhD, is Professor of Music at Harvard University. Before moving to Harvard in 2008, she taught at Oxford University for eight years. Clark specializes in the music of Franz Schubert, the history of music theory, and medieval music. Her book Analyzing Schubert was published by Cambridge University Press in 2011. Clark has given lectures in the UK, USA, Canada, France and Germany and has held fellowships from the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (Germany), Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada), British Academy (UK), Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK). Most recently she was the William J. Bouwsma Fellow at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina. She currently serves on Council for the American Musicological Society and, starting in 2013, will be Reviews Editor for the Journal of the American Musicological Society. At Harvard, Clark teaches courses primarily in music theory, but also in historical musicology. Suzannah Clark grew up mainly in Newfoundland, Canada and also went to schools in England, France and Italy. She did her undergraduate and master’s degrees at King’s College London (UK) and graduated with an MFA (1993) and PhD (1997) from Princeton University.

Violinist and violist Matt Albert is the Chair of Chamber Music at the School of Music, Theatre & Dance at the University of Michigan. He previously served as the Director of Chamber Music and SYZYGY at the Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University. He was a founding member of Eighth Blackbird, with whom he received numerous awards, including first prizes at the Naumburg, Concert Artists Guild, Coleman, and Fischoff Competitions, and three Grammy awards for their recordings on Cedille Records. He serves as one of the concertmasters for Nu Deco Ensemble and regularly plays as the violist with Alarm Will Sound. Previous collaborations include work with Seraphic Fire, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Wilco, the Shreveport Symphony (as Concertmaster), the Baltimore Symphony, and the Sarasota Orchestra (as Associate Concertmaster). In the summers he mentors for Evolution: Classical at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and he plays principal second violin for the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music.

Image by RR Jones.

Lesley Robertson (viola), performed across the globe for 33 years with the internationally celebrated St. Lawrence String Quartet. A native of Edmonton she now makes her home at Stanford University where, along with her SLSQ colleagues, she directs the chamber music program at the department of music. At Stanford she also teaches viola, coaches chamber music, and spearheads the SLSQ’s Emerging String Quartet Program and the SLSQ’s annual Chamber Music Seminar. A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School, Robertson also holds a  degree from the University of British Columbia where she studied with her mentor Gerald Stanick. She has toured with Musicians from Marlboro and served on the juries of the Banff, Melbourne, and Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competitions. With strong ties to the Banff Centre stretching back to her first summer program as a 7 yr old and continuing through decades of deeply formative experiences, Lesley is grateful and delighted to return in 2023.