The Verona Quartet

Acclaimed for its bold interpretive strength and electrifying performances, the Verona Quartet is the 2020 recipient of Chamber Music America’s prestigious Cleveland Quartet Award. The Quartet’s members represent four different nations, but their singular approach and unanimity of purpose in both musical and cultural cooperation have quickly earned the group a reputation as an “outstanding ensemble...cohesive yet full of temperament.” (The New York Times) 

The Verona Quartet is one of the most sought after string quartets of its generation, delighting audiences at venues worldwide such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall and Melbourne Recital Hall, in addition to appearances at La Jolla Summerfest, Chamber Music Northwest, Bravo! Vail and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. The group’s 2019-2020 season includes tours across North America, Asia and South America; upcoming highlights include performances at The Kennedy Center, Library of Congress, Celebrity Series of Boston, Cliburn Concerts’ Beethoven@250 festival, Lunenberg Academy of Music Performance, and Schneider Concert Series.

Since winning the 2015 Concert Artists Guild competition, the Verona Quartet has cultivated a progressive approach to collaboration and programming including numerous cross-cultural and inter-disciplinary enterprises. Projects include performances with dancers from Brooklyn’s Dance Heginbotham, artistic exchange with traditional Emirati poets in the UAE and collaborations through the Kennedy Center’s Direct Current Festival with folk supergroup I’m With Her as well as cellist Joshua Roman. Other notable collaborators include Anne-Marie McDermott, Orion Weiss, Cho-Liang Lin, Atar Arad, Paul Katz, David Shifrin, Charles Neidich, and Renée Fleming.

The Verona Quartet has developed a consummate reputation for its compelling interpretations of contemporary music, and regularly champions and commissions works from composers such as Julia Adolphe, Sebastian Currier, Richard Danielpour, as well as Michael Gilbertson, whose Quartet was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Forthcoming album releases include Gilbertson’s Quartet, as well as the Verona Quartet’s debut album, Diffusion, on Azica Records featuring works by Ravel, Szymanowski and Janacek.

The Verona Quartet rose to international prominence by sweeping top prizes at competitions across four continents, including the Wigmore Hall, Melbourne, Osaka and M-Prize International Competitions. The Quartet currently serves as the inaugural Quartet-in-Residence with North Carolina’s Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle, where it performs over ten concerts and forty community engagement activities annually. Strongly committed to education, the Verona Quartet is also Quartet-in-Residence for the Indiana University Summer String Academy and New England Conservatory Preparatory School. Further positions include the 2017-18 Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts as well as guest residencies at numerous institutions worldwide including Oberlin Conservatory of Music, USC Thornton School of Music, The Hartt School, UNC School of the Arts, Syracuse University, Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance and the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music.

Formed at Indiana University under the tutelage of the Pacifica Quartet and Atar Arad, the Verona Quartet went on to complete residencies at The Juilliard School with the Juilliard String Quartet, as well as the New England Conservatory with Paul Katz. The group also counts among its principal mentors Alex Kerr, David Finckel, Donald Weilerstein, Martha Katz, Merry Peckham, Miriam Fried, Kim Kashkashian and Nicholas Kitchen.  The ensemble’s “thoughtful, impressive” performances (Cleveland Classical) emanate from the spirit of storytelling; the Quartet believes that the essence of storytelling transcends genre and therefore the name "Verona" pays tribute to William Shakespeare, one of the greatest storytellers of all time.