Borromeo String Quartet
www.borromeoquartet.org
NICHOLAS KITCHEN,
Violin
KRISTOPHER TONG, Violin
MAI MOTOBUCHI, Viola
YEESUN KIM, Cello
Ensemble-in-Residence
at the New England Conservatory of Music
Ensemble-in-Residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Ensemble-in-Residence at the Taos School of Music summer program
Winner of the 2007 Avery Fisher Career Grant
Winner of Lincoln Center's Martin E. Segal Award (2001)
Winner of the Cleveland Quartet Award (1998)
Ensemble-in-Residence for National Public Radio's Performance Today
(1998-99)
Top Prize at the International String Quartet Competition in Evian,
France (1990)
News Quotes
"A remarkably accomplished string quartet, not simply for its
high technical polish and refined tone, but more importantly for
the searching musical insights it brings."
– The Chicago Tribune
"A musical experience of luminous beauty"
- The San Diego Reader
"Each of the greatest string quartets has redefined what the
possibilities of the medium are: through the perfection of its ensemble
and intonation, through its poise and its passion, the Borromeos
are recreating the medium anew and we are lucky to be here to hear
it."
- The Boston Globe
"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."
- New York Times
"It would not be an exaggeration for me to say that much of this
book has come from trying to figure out what makes the Borromeo
Quartet’s performances so emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually
captivating."
– from ‘Music and the Soul' by author Kurt Leland
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 there is."
Now celebrating its 25th anniversary, 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. The next
offering of Living Archive, a music learning web portal, will be
released next season.
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 quartet has been ensemble-in-residence at the New England Conservatory
and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum for twenty-three years;
and has worked extensively as performers and educators with the
Library of Congress (highlighting both its manuscripts and instrument
collections); the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the
Taos School of Music. The ensemble joined the Emerson Quartet as
the 2014-15 Hittman Ensembles in Residence at the Peabody Institute
in Baltimore, and its upcoming season includes substantial residencies
at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Kansas University
in Lawrence, and the San Francisco Conservatory.
The ensemble has been acclaimed for its presentation of the cycle
of Bartok String Quartets as well as its lecture"BARTOK: 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. Describing a Bartok 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 DECATHALON (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, Dvorak, Brahms,
Schumann, Schoenberg, Janacek, Lera Auerbach, Tchaikovsky, and Gunther
Schuller.
The Quartet has collaborated with some of this generation’s most
important composers, including Gunther Schuller, John Cage, Gyorgy
Ligeti, Steve Reich, Osvaldo Golijov, Jennifer Higdon, Steve Mackey,
John Harbison, 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, the Concertgebouw, Seoul Arts Center, Shanghai Oriental Arts
Center, the Incontri in Terra di Siena Chamber Music Festival in
Tuscany, the Prague Spring Festival and the Haydn Festival in Eisenstadt.
The 2015-16 season includes performances in Switzerland, Japan,
Korea and China; the Bartók Cycle in Boston, San Francisco and at
the Library of Congress; and appearances at the Schubert Club in
Minneapolis, Amherst College, and Trinity Church Wall Street, to
name only a few.
"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 top prizes at the International String Quartet Competition
in Evian, France. [September 2015]
|