Welcome to chamber music at the University of Colorado Boulder College of Music! We’re known for our extensive chamber music program. Various student ensembles—for strings, woodwinds, brasses, voice and mixed media—are organized throughout the academic year. These groups receive regular coaching sessions from our distinguished faculty and have numerous performance opportunities, both on and off campus.
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 chamber music ensembles
Lírios Quartet
Graduate String Quartet in Residence
Formed in 2022 at the University of Colorado Boulder College of Music, the Lírios Quartet comprises four emerging artists who have come together under the mentorship of the Takács Quartet. As the college’s current Graduate String Quartet in Residence, they are also engaged with developments in new music, taking part in the Pendulum New Music series with two premieres in the 2022-2023 season. Additionally, they will be collaborating with the Sohap Ensemble and Art Song Colorado in commissioning a new chamber opera, “Colorado Sky,” including a workshopping residency at the ATLAS Institute in January 2023. The Lírios Quartet is a recipient of the Dorothy 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 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.
Juniper Winds
Graduate Woodwind Quintet in Residence
Formed in 2022 at the University of Colorado Boulder College of Music, the Juniper Winds Quintet is the college’s current Graduate Woodwind Quintet in Residence. Hailing from Minnesota, China, New Jersey, Arkansas and Alabama, members of the quintet serve as teaching assistants and mentors for our flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn studios. The ensemble performs two recitals each year, as well as community outreach programming. Coached by Professor of Bassoon Yoshi Ishikawa and other woodwind faculty, the group comprises flutist Lauren Flaten, oboist Sophie Maeda, clarinetist Yi Dong, bassoonist J.T. Holdbrooks and hornist Derrick Rassinier.
Ensemble Flatirons
Graduate Brass Quintet in Residence
Ensemble Flatirons is the Graduate Brass Quintet in Residence at the University of Colorado Boulder College of Music. Quintet members—coached by Professor of Trombone William Stanley—are all DMA candidates hailing from California, Hawaii, Montana, Texas and Wisconsin. Ensemble Flatirons regularly performs a variety of music at the College of Music and throughout the greater Boulder/Denver area.