Calidore String Quartet to present next two concerts in Slee/Beethoven cycle

The internationally acclaimed Calidore String Quartet returns to UB next week to present the third and fourth concerts in this season’s Slee/Beethoven String Quartet Cycle.

 The concerts will take place at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 15 and at 3 p.m. Feb. 16, both in Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall, North Campus.

The program for the Feb. 15 concert will feature Quartet in D Major, Op. 18, No. 3; “Grosse Fuge,” Op. 133; and Quartet in F Major, Op. 59, No. 1; the following day, the musicians will perform Quartet in F minor, Op. 95 “Serioso”; Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 18, No. 6; and Quartet in A minor, Op. 132.

The remaining concerts in the cycle will be performed on April 25 and 26. The quartet will lead a master class at 11 a.m. April 25 in Baird Recital Hall, 250 Baird Hall, North Campus.

The Calidore String Quartet — Jeffrey Myers, violin; Ryan Meehan, violin; Jeremy Berry, viola; and Estelle Choi, cello — has been praised by The New York Times for its “deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct.”

Recipient of a 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant and a 2017 Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists, the quartet first made international headlines as winner of the $100,000 Grand Prize of the 2016 M-Prize Chamber Arts Competition. The quartet was the first North American ensemble to win the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship and a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist award; it is currently in residence with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two).

This season, the Calidore String Quartet celebrates both its 10th anniversary and the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth by presenting cycles of his string quartets at the Colburn School in Los Angeles and the universities of Toronto and Delaware, in addition to UB. In Europe, the musicians will perform Beethoven quartets in Antwerp, Dresden and at the Rheingau Musik Festival.

In addition, the Calidore is premiering a new work by composer Anna Clyne inspired by Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge and commissioned by Music Accord in performances at Lincoln Center, Princeton University, Penn State, Caramoor, San Francisco Performances, and Boston’s Celebrity Series.

The ensemble’s name — an amalgamation of “California” and “doré,” French for “golden” — represents its reverence for the diversity of culture and the strong support it has received from its original home: Los Angeles, Calif., the “golden state.”

Tickets for the Calidore’s presentations of the Slee/Beethoven String Quartet Cycle are available through a variety of outlets at the following pricing structure:

UB faculty, staff, alumni, seniors and non-UB students

$10 plus $2.18 fee and minimal credit card charge at eventbrite.

$14 in person at the Center for the Arts (noon to 6 p.m., Tuesday through Friday)

$17 in person at the door (one hour before concert time)

General public

$15 plus $2.18 fee and minimal credit card charge at eventbrite.

$19 in person at the Center for the Arts (noon to 6 p.m., Tuesday through Friday)

$22 in person at the door (one hour before concert time)

UB students are admitted free with ID.

For a complete listing of all concerts being presented by the Department of Music, visit the department’s website.