Ciompi String Quartet with pianist Ieva Jokūbavičiūtė

Saturday, November 2, 7:30 pm, Sweeney Concert Hall

The Ciompi Quartet and Ieva Jokūbavičiūtė return to perform Mieczysław Weinberg’s Piano Quintet of 1944, a work of tremendous range and depth, sure to be a welcome discovery. Works by W. A. Mozart, African American master William Grant Still, and Elizabethan composer John Dowland round out the evening.

“…the group plays everything as if its life depends on it…” — The News and Observer, Raleigh

The Ciompi Quartet

Eric Pritchard, violin; Hsiao-mei Ku, violin; Jonathan Bagg, viola; Caroline Stinson, cello.

Since its founding in 1965 by the renowned Italian violinist Giorgio Ciompi, the Ciompi Quartet of Duke University has delighted audiences and impressed critics around the world. All its members are professors at Duke, where they teach instrumental lessons, coordinate and coach chamber music, and perform across campus in concert halls, libraries, dormitories, and classrooms. In a career that spans five continents and includes many hundreds of concerts, the Ciompi Quartet has developed a reputation for performances of real intelligence and musical sophistication, with a warm, unified sound that allows each player’s individual voice to emerge.

In recent years, the Ciompi Quartet has performed from Washington State to California, Texas, New York, Washington DC, and New England, and abroad from China to France, Italy, Germany, Prague, Serbia, and Albania. In the summer the Quartet has performed at the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in Detroit, North Carolina’s Eastern Music Festival and Highlands Chamber Music Festival, and at Monadnock Music in New Hampshire.

The Quartet’s commitment to creative programming often mixes the old and the brand new in exciting ways. Its extensive catalog of commissions includes many that the group continues to perform on tour. Close ties to composers such as Paul Schoenfield, Stephen Jaffe, Scott Lindroth, and Melinda Wagner have produced important contributions to the repertoire. The quartet recently premiered Stephen Jaffe’s Third String Quartet and two new quintets by Lindroth: “Schley Road” for quartet and saxophone, and his Cello Quintet, written for the Ciompi and cellist Ashley Bathgate. The group’s most recent recordings are on Toccata Classics (a string quartet by 19th century violin virtuoso Heinrich Ernst), and Naxos, which released “Journey to the West” by Chiayu Hsu in 2015. Also on Naxos online is a recording of the quartets of Paul Schoenfield, including the popular “Tales from Chelm.” Numerous other discs are on the CRI, Arabesque, Albany, Gasparo, and Sheffield Lab labels, with music from Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, up through the present. In 1994 Albany Records released the Ciompi’s recording of string quartets by Smith College Professor Emeritus of Music Donald Wheelock.

Ieva Jokūbavičiūtė

Lithuanian pianist Ieva Jokūbavičiūtė’s powerfully and intricately crafted performances have earned her critical acclaim throughout North America and Europe. Her ability to communicate the essential substance of a work has led critics to describe her as possessing ‘razor-sharp intelligence and wit’ and ‘subtle, complex, almost impossibly detailed and riveting in every way’ (The Washington Post) and as ‘an artist of commanding technique, refined temperament and persuasive insight’ (The New York Times). In 2006, she was honored as a recipient of a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship.

Labor Records released Ieva’s debut recording in 2010 to critical international acclaim, which resulted in recitals in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, DC, Vilnius, and Toulouse. She made her orchestral debuts with the Chicago Symphony; in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; with the American Youth Philharmonic in 2016, and in February 2017 with the Orquesta Filarmónica de Montevideo in Uruguay. Her piano trio, Trio Cavatina, won the 2009 Naumburg International Chamber Music Competition. Ieva’s recording, Returning Paths: solo piano works by Janáček and Suk, was released to critical acclaim in 2014.

In the fall of 2016, Ieva began a collaboration with the violinist Midori, with recitals in Canada, at the Cartagena International Music Festival in Colombia, and in Germany and Austria. They have since given recitals in Japan, Germany, Austria, Poland, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, India, and Sri Lanka.

Jokubaviciute’s latest piano solo recording, Northscapes, was released in 2021. This recording project weaves works written within the last decade by composers from the Nordic and Baltic countries of Europe, into a tapestry of soundscapes that echo the reverberations between landscape, sound, and the imagination. The recording includes works by Kaja Saariaho, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Raminta Šerkšnyte, Lasse Thoresen, Bent Sorensen, and Pēteris Vasks.

A much sought-after chamber musician and collaborator, Ieva regularly tours and appears at international music festivals including: Marlboro; Ravinia; Bard; Caramoor; Chesapeake Chamber Music; Prussia Cove in Cornwall, England; and Festival de la musique de chambre at La Lointaine in France. She has participated in the Schleswig-Holstein Festival in Lubeck, Germany; the Katrina Chamber Music Festival, Aland Islands, Finland; the Oulunsalo Chamber Music Festival in Oulunsalo, Finland; the Joaquin Turina Chamber Music Festival in Seville, Spain; and Music in the Vineyards in Napa Valley, CA; the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, VT; Salt Bay Chamber Music Festival in Maine, and the Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival at East Carolina University. In February 2024 she joined violinist Itamar Zorman on the Valley Classical Concerts stage.

Earning degrees from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and from Mannes College of Music in New York City, her principal teachers have been Seymour Lipkin and Richard Goode. Currently, Ieva is Associate Professor of the Practice of Piano at Duke University in Durham, NC having previously been on the faculty at Shenandoah Conservatory in Winchester, VA. Ieva is also on the faculty at the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music School and Festival in Blue Hill, ME and has established herself as a mentoring artist at the Marlboro Music Festival in Marlboro, VT.