“Exquisitely unified playing… the intonation and blend near faultless, revealing some gorgeous motivic interplay and harmonic sweetness.” – Washington Classical Review
“Polished sonority and well-balanced, tightly synchronized ensemble … it is heartening to know that chamber music is in good hands with such gifted young ensembles as the Isidore Quartet.” – Chicago Classical Review
Sunday, May 2, 2:00 pm preconcert discussion, 3:00 pm performance at Sweeney Auditorium in Sage Hall at Smith College
The Program:
Haydn: Quartet in F Minor, Op. 20, No. 5
Billy Childs: Quartet No. 4
Webern: Langsamer Satz
Mendelssohn: Quartet in F Minor, Op. 80.
The New York City–based Isidore String Quartet, winner of the 14th Banff International String Quartet Competition (2022) and recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant (2023), is committed to rediscovering and reinvigorating the string quartet repertoire. Formed at the Juilliard School in 2019 and coached by members of the Juilliard String Quartet, the ensemble carries forward Juilliard’s lineage of “approaching the established as if it were brand new, and the new as if it were firmly established”—a philosophy that continues to shape its curiosity-driven approach to both canonical and contemporary works.
Following their Banff victory, the quartet served as the Peak Fellowship Ensemble-in-Residence at Southern Methodist University before rapidly expanding onto the international stage. Now performing in more than 125 cities each season, Isidore has appeared across major cultural centers including New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Amsterdam, London, Edinburgh, Paris, Berlin, Cologne, Brussels, and Zurich, among many others.. The quartet has collaborated with leading artists including James Ehnes, Jeremy Denk, Anthony McGill, and members of the Miró, Brentano, and Juilliard String Quartets.
Beyond the concert stage, the Isidore String Quartet is deeply invested in expanding access to live music and rethinking what classical performance can look like in contemporary life. The group works regularly with youth, elderly audiences, and communities with limited access to live performance, approaching music as a “playground” for shared discovery rather than a one-way presentation. As the inaugural Arts Leadership Ensemble for Project: Music Heals Us, the quartet has brought performances into hospitals, prisons, disability centers, and homeless shelters—experiences that continue to inform its artistic perspective as much as any major concert hall.
The ensemble’s name honors violinist Isidore Cohen, an early member of the Juilliard String Quartet, and reflects its direct artistic lineage through coaching with Joseph Lin, Astrid Schween, the late Joel Krosnick and Roger Tapping, and training with Joseph Kalichstein, Laurie Smukler, and Misha Amory, among other distinguished mentors.
And in a lighter nod to its namesake, “Isidore” also playfully recalls a folkloric Greek monk said to have devised an early recipe for vodka in the Grand Duchy of Moscow—an origin story the quartet is happy to let remain part legend, part good humor, and entirely in keeping with its sense that music-making should be both serious and alive.