Join the American String Quartet for an afternoon of chamber music on April 14. The concert begins at 3 p.m. at Kol Yisrael, 290 North St., in Newburgh.
Kol Yisrael is a change venue for Newburgh Chamber Music, the concert’s sponsor, which traditionally has staged performances at St. George’s Church. NCM chose it for this special concert as it observes several milestones: the 50th anniversary of the quartet and one of its founders, violinist Laurie Carney, and the departure of its longtime violist, Dan Avshalomov.
The concert will mark the 13th appearance by the quartet for Newburgh Chamber Music. The program will feature Beethoven’s Quartet in F Major, Op. 135, Shostakovich’s, Quartet No. 13 in B-flat Minor Op. 13, and the Brahms Quintet in G Major, Op. 111, which the composer intended to be his last work. Joining the ensemble for the Brahms performance will be guest violist Matthias Buchholz.
The internationally renowned quartet was founded in 1974 by Carney and several other students at the Juilliard School. The ensemble has performed in all 50 states and around the world. Its recordings of the complete quartets of Beethoven, Mozart, and other composers have won widespread acclaim.
The quartet in recent years has collaborated with the National Book Award winner Phil Klay and poet Tom Sleigh on a program featuring music and readings that examine the effects of war. The Quartet also collaborated with author Salman Rushdie in a work for narrator and quartet by the film composer Paul Cantelon built around Rushdie’s novel “The Enchantress of Florence.”
Besides Avshalomov and Carney, the quartet also includes violinists violinist Peter Winograd, and cellist Wolfram Koessel.
The Strad magazine hailed violist Avshalomov as “one of the finest occupants of that chair, both instrumentally and musically, of any quartet now active.” He was a founding member of the Orpheus Chamber Ensemble and was a frequent guest artist with the Guarneri Quartet
Besides being one of the founding members of the ensemble, Carney holds the distinction of performing quartets longer than any other woman in the elite field. The quartet began concertizing while she was still an undergraduate at Juilliard. A champion of new music, she gave the premiere of Gianpaolo Bracali’s Fantasia for violin and piano.
Winograd joined the quartet in 1990. He gave his first solo public performance at the age of 11 and was a top prize winner in the 1988 Naumburg International Violin Competition. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Juilliard.
Koessel has performed as a musician, recitalist, and soloist. The Strad praised his “exceptionally attractive cello playing.” As a soloist, he has performed concertos throughout the United States as well as with Japan’s Osaka Symphony Orchestra and orchestras in Germany and South America.
Buchholz, a frequent soloist and guest artist with ensembles around the world, has win numerous recognitions. He began his studies at Hamburg in his native Germany and has also studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and the University of Cincinnati.
Tickets are $35 for adults, $30 for seniors, and$10 for students. They are available at the door (cash or check only), or online at newburghchambermusic.org.