Music Festival presents The Cassatt String Quartet at Garvan Gardens

Tuesday, October 1 at 7 p.m., the Hot Springs Music Festival will present a concert by the internationally acclaimed Cassatt String Quartet at Garvan Woodland Gardens’ Anthony Chapel.  The program includes Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major and Antonin Dvořák’s “American” String Quartet No. 12 in F Major, Op. 96.

Tickets are $20 with $5 student tickets available at the door.  Call the Festival office at 501.623.4763 to purchase tickets in advance.

Acclaimed as one of America's outstanding ensembles, the Manhattan based Cassatt String Quartet has performed throughout North America, Europe, and the Far East.  Mentor ensemble in residence at the 2012 Hot Springs Music Festival, Cassatt will return once again to Hot Springs to kick off a four day tour of Arkansas.

Festival Executive Director Todd Cranson remarks, “an ensemble of this caliber performing in a setting as beautiful and acoustically remarkable as Garvan Gardens’ Anthony Chapel is an event not to be missed!”

This concert is sponsored in part by the Hot Springs Alumni Chapter of Sigma Alpha Iota International Music Fraternity for Women and other members of the Music Festival family of supporters.

The 2014 Hot Springs Music Festival will take place June 1-14 and include over 20 concerts and 250 free, open-to-the-public rehearsals.  The Festival, now in its nineteenth season, pairs world-class mentor musicians from major orchestras, chamber ensembles and conservatory faculties with especially talented pre-professional apprentices–all of whom receive full scholarship plus housing.  For two weeks each June, these groups play “side by side” in orchestral, chamber, solo recital, vocal, choral and chamber opera repertoire.

About the Cassatt String Quartet:

The Cassatt String Quartet has performed throughout North America, Europe, and the Far East, with appearances at New York's Alice Tully Hall and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Tanglewood Music Theater, the Kennedy Center and Library of Congress in Washington, DC, the Theatre des Champs-Élysées in Paris and Maeda Hall in Tokyo. The Quartet has been presented on major radio stations such as National Public Radio's Performance Today, Boston's WGBH, New York's WQXR and WNYC, and on Canada's CBC Radio and Radio France.

Formed in 1985 with the encouragement of the Juilliard Quartet, the Cassatt initiated and served as the inaugural participants in Juilliard's Young Artists Quartet Program. Their numerous awards include a Tanglewood Chamber Music Fellowship, the Wardwell Chamber Music Fellowship at Yale (where they served as teaching assistants to the Tokyo Quartet), First Prizes at the Fischoff and Coleman Chamber Music Competitions, two top prizes at the Banff International String Quartet Competition, two CMA/ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming, a recording grant from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, and commissioning grants from Meet the Composer and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2004, they were selected for the centennial celebration of the Coleman Chamber Music Association in Pasadena, California.

The Cassatt celebrated its twentieth anniversary in 2006 with a series of world-premieres, a performance at the Library of Congress on the Library's Stradivarius Collection and gave concerts for the American Academy in Rome, Cornell and Syracuse Universities and were guest clinicians at the Texas Music Educators Association.

Summer highlights include their residency at the innovative Seal Bay Festival of Contemporary American Chamber Music in Maine and their debut at New York City's River to River Celebration with the multi-media premiere of Mari Kimura's "One" written for quartet, computer and interactive graphics by renowned Japanese film maker Tomoyuki Kato, with image programming by Onishi and visual production by Chisako Hasegawa. They return to the Big Sky Music Festival (MT) with cellist, Hamilton Cheifetz and to Music Mountain(CT) and Bargemusic (NY) with pianist, Ursula Oppens.

The 2013-14 season marks the Cassatt's first performance at the new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (AR) with the premiere of Bruce Adolphe's "Mary Cassatt; Scenes from Her Life" inspired by their collection and a mini-residency at the University of Central Arkansas. The Quartet will collaborate with the Kyoshinan Ensemble at the Tenri Cultural Center in New York City to give James Nyoraku Schlefer's premiere for koto, shakuhachi, shamisen and quartet followed by classes at the University of Hawaii by both ensembles. The Cassatt will also appear at Princeton University's Institute for Advanced Studies, the Honolulu Chamber Music Series, the Pleasantville Friends of Music (NY), and the Treetops Chamber Music Society (CT) with harpist, Lisa Tannenbaum.

As Symphony Space resident "All-Stars", they offer multiple recitals featuring Peter Schikele and the premiere of Tania Leon's Piano Quintet with pianist, Ursula Oppens. Finally they return to their eighth annual Texas educational residency, Cassatt In The Basin! which includes intensive workshops, coachings and rehearsals of a commissioned work for Triple Quartet, in a side-by-side performance of students with the Cassatt.

Equally adept at classical masterpieces and contemporary music, the Cassatt has collaborated with a remarkable array of artists/composers including pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin, soprano Susan Narucki, flutist Ransom Wilson, jazz pianist Fred Hersch, didgeridoo player Simon 7, the Trisha Brown Dance Company, distinguished members of the Cleveland and Vermeer Quartets, and composers Louis Andriessen and John Harbison.

With a deep commitment to nurturing young musicians, the Cassatt, in residencies at Princeton, Yale, Syracuse University, the University at Buffalo and the University of Pennsylvania, has devoted itself to coaching, conducting sectionals and reading student composers' works, while offering lively musical presentations in music theory, history and composition. Selected by Chamber Music America, they served as guest artists for their New Music Institute; a series to help presenters market new music to their audiences.

Named three times by The New Yorker magazine's Best Of...CD Selection, the Cassatt's discography includes eclectic new quartets by Pulitizer Prize-winner Steven Stucky and Tina Davidson (Albany Records), by Daniel S. Godfrey (Koch International Classics) and by Grawemeyer and Rome Prize-winner Sebastian Currier (New World) as critiqued in The New York Times (Quartetset) was written for the Cassatt... which plays it strongly here."

The Cassatt has recorded for the Koch, Naxos, New World, Point, CRI, Tzadik and Albany labels and is named for the celebrated American impressionist painter Mary Cassatt.