Welcome to the Graduate String Quartet Programs at the University of Colorado Boulder College of Music!
The College of Music offers an Artist Diploma in String Quartet Performance for one string quartet to work intensively with members of the renowned Takács Quartet and other members of the string faculty. Applications will be open to 1) preformed string quartets and also 2) individuals who apply for ‘Artist Diploma String Quartet Performance’ who would like to be considered for placement in a new graduate string quartet formed by the Takács Quartet. The next application will be available in fall 2023 for entry in fall 2024. The Takács Graduate Quartet Residency is a two-year position generously funded by the Starling Foundation and Takács Society. While participating in the program, the graduate quartet will play recitals, perform in master classes, receive regular coaching and collaborate with other instrumentalists and composers. A generous travel budget provides the quartet with support for competitions and concert opportunities outside of Boulder.
Takács Quartet
The world-renowned Takács Quartet is in its 49th season. Edward Dusinberre, Harumi Rhodes (violins), Richard O’Neill (viola) and András Fejér (cello) are excited about the 2023-2024 season that features varied projects including a new work written for them. Nokuthula Ngwenyama composed “Flow,” an exploration and celebration of the natural world. The work was commissioned by nine concert presenters throughout the United States. July sees the release of a new recording of works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Dvořák for Hyperion Records, while later in the season the quartet will release works by Schubert including his final quartet in G Major. In the spring of 2024, the ensemble will perform and record piano quintets by Price and Dvořák with longtime chamber music partner Marc-André Hamelin. As Associate Artists at London’s Wigmore Hall, the Takács will perform four concerts featuring works by Hough, Price, Janacek, Schubert and Beethoven. During the season, the ensemble will play at other prestigious European venues including Berlin, Geneva, Linz, Innsbruck, Cambridge and St. Andrews. The Takács will also appear at the Adams Chamber Music Festival in New Zealand. The group’s North American engagements include concerts in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Vancouver, Ann Arbor, Phoenix, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Portland, Cleveland, Santa Fe and Stanford. The ensemble will perform two Bartók cycles at San Jose State University and Middlebury College, and appear for the first time at the Virginia Arts Festival with pianist Olga Kern. The members of the Takács Quartet are Christoffersen Fellows and Artists in Residence at the University of Colorado Boulder. For the 2023-2024 season, the quartet enters into a partnership with El Sistema Colorado, working closely with its chamber music education program in Denver. During the summer months, the Takács join the faculty at the Music Academy of the West running an intensive quartet seminar. MORE
Graduate String Quartet in Residence
Lírios Quartet
Formed in 2022 at the University of Colorado Boulder, the Lírios Quartet comprises four emerging artists who have come together under the mentorship of the Takács Quartet. As the College of Music’s current Graduate String Quartet in Residence, they are also engaged with developments in new music, including collaborations and premieres with CU Boulder SoundWorks. Additionally, they collaborated with the Sohap Ensemble and Art Song Colorado in commissioning a new chamber opera, “Colorado Sky,” that included a workshopping residency at the ATLAS Institute in January 2023. The Lírios Quartet is a recipient of the Dorothy and Richard Starling Foundation Scholarship and the Steed Professional Development Fund.
Benjamin Goldstein is a native New Yorker and a recent bachelor of music graduate of the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music where he studied violin performance with Alexander Kerr. He has attended various summer festivals including the Bowdoin International Music Festival, Innsbrook Festival, Sarasota Music Festival and the Music Academy of the West—where he participated in a string quartet seminar with the Takács Quartet—, and has worked with prominent conductors such as Larry Rachleff, Michael Tilson Thomas and Marin Alsop. A past member of Face the Music at the Kaufman Music Center, Goldstein worked under the guidance of the Kronos Quartet and was dedicated to studying and performing works by living composers. In his free time, Goldstein produces and composes electronic music.
Born in Boulder Colorado, Maggie Brady began taking violin lessons at age 3, developing a strong passion for chamber music at a young age. Brady earned a bachelor of music from the University of Colorado Boulder where she studied with Harumi Rhodes. She is an active member at the Icicle Creek Chamber Music Institute, closely collaborating with renowned faculty artists on various chamber music works. Besides the violin, Brady loves puzzles, crocheting and spending time with her beautiful dog, Misty.
A native of Brazil, violist and violinist Yuri Santos began his musical studies at age 8 under the tutelage of his father, Ênio Antunes. An avid chamber musician, Santos is a former member of the Dior Quartet during their 2019-2020 Kuttner Student String Quartet Residency at Indiana University, mentored by the Pacifica Quartet. As winner of the 2019 Bonn Quartet Competition, he was invited to serve a week-long residency at the Beethoven-Haus Bonn and to attend the Britten-Pears Chamber Music Lab in Snape Maltings, United Kingdom, in 2020. Most recently, he was awarded first prize at the Macauley Chamber Music Competition and attended the Music Academy of the West as a fellow, taking part in a string quartet seminar led by the Takács Quartet. Santos earned a bachelor of music degree and a performer diploma from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, studying with Mark Holloway, Kevork Mardirossian and Mauricio Fuks.
Cellist Chas Barnard is an active performer, music educator and arts administrator based in Boulder, Colorado. Previously, he was a three-year teaching assistant and lecturer in the Division of Continuing Education at CU Boulder. In the summers of 2019-2021, Barnard was a fellow at the Music Academy of the West where he won the London Symphony Orchestra—Keston MAX (Music Academy Exchange) audition and performed as a finalist of the Duo Competition. He returned to the Music Academy of the West in 2022 as chamber music specialist, overseeing the festival’s chamber music program. Barnard is also a founding member of the Sohap Ensemble—a soprano-cello duet with his wife, soprano Sabina Balsamo—which collaborates with artists and composers on commissions, recordings and intimate, out-of-the-box musical experiences. Barnard enjoys spending time with his wife Sabina and his dog Jimmy, watching the Metropolitan Opera on-demand and taking in the natural beauty of Colorado.
Past in-residence string quartets
Ivalas Quartet
Founded in Ann Arbor in 2016, the Ivalas Quartet comprises violinists Reuben Kebede and Tiani Butts, violist Aimée McAnulty and cellist Pedro Sánchez. The quartet has performed with artists such as the Takács Quartet, the Calidore String Quartet, Imani Winds, Eugene Drucker, Danielle Belen, David Ying and Patricia Terry-Ross.
Ajax Quartet
Founded in 2016 at the University of Colorado, the Ajax Quartet is an emerging string quartet in the Denver area that has quickly grown in following and recognition. A Boulder-based ensemble, Ajax performs for local audiences and had concert engagements in California and Washington during Summer 2017.
Altius Quartet
Formed in 2011 at Southern Methodist University Meadows School of the Arts, the Altius Quartet has an active performance schedule including engagements at music festivals, series and universities throughout the United States. Highlights of the 2015-16 season include: performances at Music at Kohl Mansion in San Francisco and California State University in Fullerton, residencies at the Fayetteville Chamber Music Festival, the Western Slope Concert Series and participation in the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival as Shouse Artists.
Orava Quartet
During its time as our graduate quartet in residence, the Orava Quartet performed at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. and extensively across the United States. This period also saw the quartet win the Musica Viva Australia Tony Berg Award for outstanding Australian ensemble and the Peter Druce Audience Prize at the 2013 Asia Pacific Chamber Music Competition. Its members are now based in Brisbane, Australia.
Tesla Quartet
Dubbed “technically superb” by The Strad magazine, the Tesla Quartet has garnered top prizes at numerous international competitions, including the Gold Medal at the 2012 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, Third Prize and the Best Interpretation of the Commissioned Work at the Sixth International Joseph Haydn Chamber Music Competition in Vienna and Third Prize at the 2012 London International String Quartet Competition.
