The Calidore String Quartet are renowned for their “deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct” (New York Times). For more than a decade, the Calidore has enjoyed performances and residencies in world’s major venues and festivals, released multiple critically acclaimed recordings and won numerous awards. The Calidore is recognized as one of the world’s foremost interpreters of a vast repertory; from the cycles of quartets by Beethoven and Mendelssohn to works of celebrated contemporary voices like György Kurtag, Jörg Widmann and Caroline Shaw.
The 2022–2023 season includes debuts in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Prague, Madrid and Vancouver and returns to Wigmore Hall, Kennedy Center, Florence or Los Angeles. In September 2022, the Calidore performs at Carnegie Hall with violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, in a memorial concert honoring the late composer André Previn. They also enjoy collaborations this season with the Emerson String Quartet, clarinetist Anthony McGill, bassist Xavier Foley, violist Matthew Lipman and harpist Bridget Kibbey. In their most ambitious recording project to date, the Calidore are preparing the complete cycle of Beethoven’s String Quartets for Signum Records.
Recipient of a 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant and a 2017 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, the Calidore String Quartet first made international headlines as winner of the $100,000 Grand Prize of the 2016 M-Prize International Chamber Music Competition. The quartet was the first and only North American ensemble to win the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship, was a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist, and is currently in residence with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York.
Dedicated teachers and passionate supporter of music education, the Calidore String Quartet is committed to mentoring and educating young musicians, students, and audiences. In 2021 the Calidore joined the faculty of the University of Delaware School of Music and serve as artistic directors of the newly established Graduate String Quartet Fellowship Residency and the University of Delaware Chamber Music Series.
The Calidore String Quartet was founded at the Colburn School in Los Angeles in 2010. Within two years, the quartet won grand prizes in virtually all the major US chamber music competitions, including the Fischoff, Coleman, Chesapeake, and Yellow Springs competitions. The Calidore was mentored by some of the most revered personalities and performers of the international chamber music scene including the Emerson Quartet, Quatuor Ébène, Andre Roy, Arnold Steinhardt or David Finckel. An amalgamation of “California” and “doré” (French for “golden”), the ensemble’s name represents its reverence for the diversity of culture and the strong support it received from its original home: Los Angeles, California, the “golden state.”