The Ciompi Quartet

The first concert of the Ciompi Presents 2022 Summer Chamber Music Series is presented by Caroline Stinson, cellist, performing with the Lydian String Quartet. The program, titled Invention and Discovery, includes Andrew Waggoner’s fifth quartet, Invention and Sinfonia by John Harbison, a quintet based on a theme by Shakespeare, and the great Schubert Cello Quintet – three works that open vast, immersive vistas of sound. Enhanced Musical Reality, no goggles needed.

Program

John Harbison: Invention on a Theme of Shakespeare for solo cello and string quartet

Andrew Waggoner: Fifth Quartet (commissioned for the Lydian by the Fromm Foundation)

Schubert: String Quintet in C Major D.956

For this concert only: Free admission at the door or reserve online; a non-perishable food item for the Trinity Avenue Presbyterian Church’s food pantry is requested

Caroline Stinson is cellist with the Ciompi String Quartet, the resident ensemble of Duke University, where she is Associate Professor of the Practice at Duke. Ms. Stinson performs widely as a soloist, recitalist and chamber musician, appearing at Zankel Hall (Carnegie), The Gardner Museum (Boston) and The Smithsonian (DC); the Koelner Philharmonie, Lucerne Festival and Cité de la Musique in Europe, and the Centennial Centre in Canada. She is Principal Cello of Orchestra Lumos in Connecticut, under the direction of Michael Stern, and performs regularly in Canada and Europe in recital. Ms. Stinson has premiered dozens of works for solo cello, concerti and chamber music, and her many recordings include the solo CD Lines on Albany Records.

From its beginning in 1980, the Lydian String Quartet (Andrea Segar, Judith Eissenberg and Katherine Winterstein, violins; Mark Berger, viola; Joshua Gordon, cello) has been acclaimed by audiences and critics across the USA and abroad for embracing the full range of the string quartet repertory with curiosity, virtuosity, and dedication to the highest artistic ideals of music making. In its formative years, the quartet studied repertoire with Robert Koff, a founding member of the Juilliard String Quartet who had joined the Brandeis University faculty in 1958. Forging a personality of their own, the Lydians were awarded top prizes in international string quartet competitions, including Evian, Portsmouth and Banff, culminating in 1984 with the Naumburg Award for Chamber Music. In the years to follow, the quartet continued to build a reputation for their depth of interpretation, performing with “a precision and involvement marking them as among the world’s best quartets” (Chicago Sun-Times). Residing at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA since the group’s founding, the Lydians continue to offer compelling, insightful, and dramatic performances of the quartet literature.