Chiara String Quartet Plays Chamber Music at Orcas Center and the Lower this Saturday

Chiara String Quartet. Photo courtesy of Liz Linder.

The Chiara String Quartet returns to the Orcas Center Saturday, June 5, 2010 at 7:30 p.m.

The Quartet is know for “continually finding new meaning within pieces from the well-established quartet canon.” The program at the Center will include string quartets by Haydn, Jefferson Friedman and Brahms.

The 2009-2010 season is the first year in the Chara Quartet’s two-year Beethoven cycle in which they will perform all 16 of Beethoven’s string quartets. In keeping with their commitment to bring classical music to uncommon places, the quartet will perform “Beethoven in Bars” at clubs throughout the country, featuring Beethoven’s music with new works by young composers Thierry Tidrow, Lauren Loiacono and Matthew Ricketts.

Earlier in the day, the Quartet will play at the Lower Tavern in Eastsound at 4 p.m. on Saturday, in keeping with its reputation for playing “Chamber Music in any Chamber.”

The Chiara String Quartet (Rebecca Fischer and Julie Yoon, violins;Jonah Sirota, viola; and Gregory Beaver, cello), hailed as “vastly talented, vastly resourceful, and vastly committed to the music of their time” by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, will perform in concert Haydn’s Quartet in C Major, Op. 74, No. 1; Jefferson Friedman’s String Quartet #2; and Brahms’ Quartet in C minor, Op. 51, No. 1. T.

The Chiara Quartet’s performances have been described as “luminous,” “searing,” (New York Times) “soulful,” “biting,” and possessing a “potent collective force” (Strings Magazine).

The Chiara (“key-ARE-uh”, meaning “clear, pure, or light” in Italian) are in residence at Harvard University for four one-week periods each academic year from 2008-2011, as the Blodgett Artists-in-Residence.

Tickets: $25 General Admission; $17 Orcas Center Members; $11 Students at www.orcascenter.org or 360.376.2281