31 Aug Chamber Music: Balourdet Quartet Pairs Ravel/Brahms/Outer Space, 9/13!
The Balourdet Quartet pairs two staples of the chamber repertoire — Ravel’s shimmering String Quartet in F major and Brahms’s String Quartet No. 3 — when the acclaimed young ensemble comes to Telluride’s historic Sheridan Opera House. Concert takes place Sunday, September 13, 7pm, presented by Telluride Chamber Music.
“So electrifying was this young, ebullient foursome that anything could be allowed…an outward love affair played with love…winning from this most winning ensemble.” — The Classical Music Network
Tickets: telluridechambermusic.org (Advance: Adults/$40, Student/$20; VIP table of 4/$300; $5 more at the door)
Go here for a taste of what’s in store.
Go here for more about Telluride Chamber Music.
Balourdet, courtesy the artists & Telluride Chamber Music.
Between them, a 10-minute trip to another galaxy: composer Nicky Sohn’s “Galaxy Back to You,” born from an unusual birthday gift. Earlier this year, Sohn’s partner gave her a galaxy — NGC 4258, an intermediate spiral galaxy discovered in 1781, named in her honor — and she gave it back in musical form, turning to ChatGPT to help conceptualize the piece’s seven short movements while keeping full ownership of the music itself.
“All four of them are ecstatic players with so much character and depth,” Sohn has said of the Quartet, “and every performance of theirs has been electric.”
The Balourdet Quartet formed in 2018 at the Taos School of Music, where its members — violinists Angela Bae and Justin DeFilippis, violist Benjamin Zannoni, and cellist Russell Houston — bonded around the table of Chef Antoine Balourdet and later took his name in tribute to the spirit of friendship he brought to their early days.
Praised as “an ensemble unafraid to show its personality” (The Strad), the Quartet went on to hold graduate residencies at the New England Conservatory and Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, taking top prizes at the Banff, Borciani, and Nielsen International String Quartet Competitions and the Gold Medal at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. That was alll before winning the Grand Prize at New York’s Concert Artists Guild Competition in 2021.
Since then, the Quartet has won the 2024 Avery Fisher Career Grant and Chamber Music America’s 2024 Cleveland Quartet Award, and in 2026 was named the inaugural fellow of the Resonance String Quartet Fellowship.
This season brings performances at Carnegie Hall, the Smithsonian Museum, Boston’s Celebrity Series, the Rockport Music Festival, and La Jolla Music Society, alongside collaborators including Yo-Yo Ma, Marc-André Hamelin, James Ehnes, Misha Dichter, Simone Dinnerstein, Zuill Bailey, and the Dover, Pacifica, and Ying Quartets.
The morning after the concert, the Quartet trades the concert stage for a student outreach at the Mountain School — not a lecture about chamber music, but a chance for students to see how the music happens up close. The visit continues a pattern for the Quartet, whose community-education work includes residencies with the Seattle Chamber Music Society and a partnership with Seattle’s Memory Hub designing music-based programming for people living with memory loss.
“Absolute musical perfection… full, robust sound… impeccable balance”— The Boston Musical Intelligencer.
“Brilliant”— The New York Times.
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