Cassatt ensemble to be Quartet-in-Residence

The Cassatt String Quartet is made up of four robustly talented individuals-critically acclaimed, hardworking female musicians with gold-standard credentials. Together, they have earned a reputation as one of America's most outstanding and adventurous young string ensembles, noted for "stylistic versatility, intensity, unblemished lyricism" and "obsession with texture."

The UB Department of Music has named the Cassatt String Ensemble as the Slee Quartet-in-Residence for the 1998-99 season, the first quartet-in-residence at UB in more than 15 years.

Music department Chair David Felder introduced the ensemble to the public at a press conference held Monday in Slee Concert Hall at which he welcomed them warmly, and with some fanfare, to the university community.

Felder announced that, in connection with its residency, the Cassatt will perform 12 concerts at UB this year. Three will be of mixed repertoire. Six more will comprise the entire 1998-99 UB Slee Beethoven Cycle. The group will perform three or four concerts as principal chairs with the Slee Sinfonetta, UB's professional chamber orchestra. It will finish the season with a final concert featuring the work of new composers at the 1999 June In Buffalo Festival and Conference for emerging composers.

In addition to its concert series, the ensemble will teach master classes in violin, viola, cello and ensemble performance, as well as youth concerts in Slee Hall. It also will participate in the music department's community and campus outreach programs.

As a means of self-introduction during the press conference, the ensemble-Kelley Mikkelsen, cello; Michiko Oshima, viola; Muneko Otani, violin, and Jennifer Leshnower, violin-performed the last movement of the Ravel String Quartet.

Individually, the members of the quartet have impressive international credentials and trained at some of the finest music schools and conservatories here and abroad. All are on the faculties of noted music schools and have performed for years with distinguished orchestras and ensembles throughout the country.

Collectively, they have earned critical raves throughout North America, Europe and the Far East. The group also has won top prizes at the Fischoff, Coleman and Banff competitions and received the 1995 Chamber Music America/ASCAP First Prize Award for Adventurous Programming.

Members of the quartet hold current residencies at Syracuse and East Carolina universities, New York City's Bang On A Can Festival, the Seal Bay Festival in Maine and the Swannanoa Chamber Festival in North Carolina. They have served as resident artists at the Caramoor Center and the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival, and have presented master classes and concerts at Yale and Princeton universities and at Oberlin, Wellesley and Bennington colleges.

The quartet records for the New World, Point (Phillips Classics), Albany, Tzadik and CRI labels.