Aizuri Quartet
Kim Kashkashian, viola
Marcy Rosen, cello

The Aizuri Quartet has established a unique position within today’s musical landscape, infusing all of their music-making with infectious energy, joy and warmth, cultivating curiosity in listeners, and inviting audiences into the concert experience through their innovative programming, and the depth and fire of their performances.

Praised by The Washington Post for “astounding” and “captivating” performances that draw from its notable “meld of intellect, technique and emotions,” the Aizuri Quartet was awarded the Grand Prize at the 2018 M-Prize Chamber Arts Competition, along with top prizes at the 2017 Osaka International Chamber Music Competition in Japan and the 2015 Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition in London. The Quartet’s debut album, Blueprinting, featuring new works written for the Aizuri Quartet by five American composers, was released by New Amsterdam Records to critical acclaim (“In a word, stunning” - I Care If You Listen), nominated for a 2019 GRAMMY Award, and named one of NPR Music’s Best Classical Albums of 2018.

The Aizuris view the string quartet as a living art and springboard for community, collaboration, curiosity and experimentation. At the core of their music-making is a virtuosic ability to illuminate a vast range of musical styles through their eclectic, engaging and thought-provoking programs. The Quartet has drawn praise both for bringing “a technical bravado and emotional power” to bold new commissions, and for its “flawless” (San Diego Union-Tribune) performances of the great works of the past. Exemplifying this intrepid spirit, the Aizuri Quartet curated and performed five adventurous programs as the 2017-2018 MetLiveArts String Quartet-in-Residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, leading The New York Times to applaud them as “genuinely exciting,” “imaginative,” and “a quartet of expert collaborators.” For this series, they collaborated with spoken word artist Denice Frohman and shakuhachi player Kojiro Umezaki, commissioned new works by Kinan Azmeh, Michi Wiancko and Wang Lu, as well as commissioned new arrangements of vocal music by Hildegard von Bingen and Carlo Gesualdo, which they paired with the music of Conlon Nancarrow, Haydn and Beethoven in a program focused on music created in periods of isolation.

The 21-22 concert season, featuring the Aizuri Quartet’s Expanse, What’s Past is Prologue, and Song Emerging recital programs, showcased the breadth of the Quartet’s musical appetite. Notable highlights include the Quartet’s major concerto debut with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra in performances of John Adams’s Absolute Jest, its debut at the 92Y, a collaborative program with Anthony McGill and Demarre McGill at the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and the premieres of new string quartets by Lembit Beecher and Paul Wiancko presented by the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C.

The 20-21 concert season illustrated the Aizuri Quartet’s ingenuity and creativity, as they offered presenters and audiences beautifully filmed performances along with spoken program notes for virtual concerts during the course of the pandemic. The Quartet appeared in virtual and hybrid concerts presented by Baryshnikov Arts Center, Tippet Rise, Friends of Chamber Music Denver, Kaufmann Music Center, Ohio Performing Arts, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, New Orleans Friends of Chamber Music, Lincoln Friends of Chamber Music, Chamber Music Pittsburgh and Shriver Hall Concert Series, among others. Special projects included collaborations with Celtic harpist Maeve Gilchrist, as well as guitarist Nels Cline, with whom they recorded Douglas Cuomo’s Seven Limbs. Released on Sunnyside Records, the work was presented by the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, Center for the Art of Performance UCLA, Moss Arts Center and Aperio, Music of the Americas. Additionally, the Quartet designed virtual residencies in collaboration with the composition departments of Princeton University, University of Southern California and the NEXT Festival of Emerging Artists, workshopping and filming the works of emerging composers.

The Aizuris believe in an integrative approach to music-making, in which their teaching, performing, writing, arranging, curation and role in the community are all connected. In Fall 2020 they launched AizuriKids, a free, online series of educational videos for children that uses the string quartet as a catalyst for creative learning and features themes such as astronomy, American history and cooking. These vibrant, whimsical and interactive videos are lovingly produced by the Aizuris and are paired with activity sheets to inspire further exploration.

The Aizuri Quartet is passionate about nurturing the next generation of artists, and is deeply grateful to have held several residencies that were instrumental in its development: from 2014-2016, the String Quartet-in-Residence at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, the 2015-2016 Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, and the resident ensemble of the 2014 Ravinia Festival’s Steans Music Institute.

Formed in 2012 and combining four distinctive musical personalities into a powerful collective, the Aizuri Quartet draws its name from “aizuri-e,” a style of predominantly blue Japanese woodblock printing that is noted for its vibrancy and incredible detail.

Kim Kashkashian, internationally recognized as a unique voice on the viola, was born of Armenian parents in Michigan. She studied the viola with Karen Tuttle and legendary violist Walter Trampler at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore. Since fall 2000 she has taught viola and chamber music at New England Conservatory.

Following Grammy Award nominations for several previous recordings, Kashkashian received a 2012 Grammy Award in the "Best Classical Instrumental Solo" category for Kurtág and Ligeti: Music for Viola, on the ECM Records label. Kashkashian's recording, with Robert Levin, of the Brahms Sonatas won the Edison Prize in 1999. Her June 2000 recording of concertos by Bartók, Eötvös and Kurtág won the 2001 Cannes Classical Award for a premiere recording by soloist with orchestra.

In 2016, Kashkashian was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Kashkashian has worked tirelessly to broaden the range of technique, advocacy, and repertoire for the viola. A staunch proponent of contemporary music, she has developed creative relationships with György Kurtág, Krzysztof Penderecki, Alfred Schnittke, Giya Kancheli, and Arvo Pärt, and commissioned works from Peter Eötvös, Ken Ueno, Thomas Larcher, Lera Auerbach, and Tigran Mansurian.

Marlboro Music and the Viennese school represented by her mentor, Felix Galimir, were major influences in developing her love of chamber music. Kim Kashkashian is a regular participant at the Verbier, Salzburg, Lockenhaus, Marlboro, and Ravinia festivals.

She has long-standing duo partnerships with pianist Robert Levin and percussionist Robyn Schulkowsky, and played in a unique string quartet with Gidon Kremer, Daniel Phillips, and Yo-Yo Ma.

As a soloist, she has appeared with the great orchestras of Berlin, London, Vienna, Milan, New York, and Cleveland, and in recital at the Metropolitan Museum of New York, Kaufmann Hall, New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall, as well as in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Frankfurt, Berlin, Paris, Athens, and Tokyo.

Kashkashian's musicianship has been well represented on recordings through her association with the prestigious ECM label in a fruitful collaboration that has been continuous since 1985.

Kim Kashkashian has taught in Bloomington, Indiana, and in Freiburg and Berlin, Germany, and now resides with her daughter in Boston. Kim is a founding member of Music for Food, an initiative by musicians to fight hunger in their home communities.

Marcy Rosen has established herself as one of the most important and respected artists of our day. Los Angeles Times music critic Herbert Glass has called her "one of the intimate art's abiding treasures." She has performed in recital and with orchestra throughout Canada, England, France, Japan, Italy, Switzerland, and all fifty of the United States.

A consummate soloist, Ms. Rosen's superb musicianship is enhanced by her many chamber music activities. She has collaborated with the world's finest musicians including Leon Fleisher, Richard Goode, András Schiff, Peter Serkin, Mitsuko Uchida, Isaac Stern, Robert Mann, Sandor Vegh, Kim Kashkashian, Jessye Norman, Lucy Shelton, Charles Neidich and the Juilliard, Emerson, and Orion Quartets. She is a founding member of the ensemble La Fenice, a group comprised of oboe, piano and string trio, as well as a founding member of the world renowned Mendelssohn String Quartet. With the Mendelssohn String Quartet she was Artist-in-Residence at the North Carolina School of the Arts and for nine years served as Blodgett-Artist-in Residence at Harvard University. The Quartet, which disbanded in January of 2010, toured annually throughout the United States, Canada and Europe for 31 years.

Marcy performs regularly at festivals both here and abroad, including the Caramoor, Santa Fe, Ravinia, Saratoga and Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festivals, the Seattle International Music Festival, the Lockenhaus Kammermusikfest in Austria and the International Musicians Seminar in England. Since 1986 she has been Artistic Director of the Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival in Maryland and as a long time participant at the Marlboro Music Festival she has taken part in over 20 "Musicians from Marlboro" tours and performed in concerts celebrating the 40th, 50th, and 60th Anniversaries of the Festival.

Marcy Rosen was born in Phoenix, Arizona, and her teachers have included Gordon Epperson, Orlando Cole, Marcus Adeney, Felix Galimir, Karen Tuttle and Sandor Vegh. She is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music. Ms. Rosen is currently Professor of Cello at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College and on the Faculty at the Mannes College of Music in New York City. She has also served on the faculties of the North Carolina School of the Arts, the Eastman School of Music, the New England Conservatory and the University of Delaware.