The renowned Calidore String Quartet presents a performance at the University of Delaware on April 6.
The group has appeared on some of the world’s most prestigious concert stages, including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and the BBC Proms.
Their performance at the University of Delaware’s Roselle Center for the Arts centers on music by Mozart, with a performance of one of his later string quartets and his only work for clarinet and string quartet, featuring a special guest performer.
“He was very much in love with the clarinet and its capabilities,” says Ryan Meehan, one of the group’s violinists. “And we could not have a better partner for this piece than Ricardo Morales, the principal clarinet of the Philadelphia Orchestra, truly one of the greatest clarinetists in the world.”
Meehan says that attending a live chamber music performance is almost as much about the sights as the sounds.
“We have no conductor,” he explains. “We have to show and give cues and feel the music completely through our own sound and body language. And so when you watch chamber music live, it is as much a visual experience as it is auditory. You really can see how we have to live, breathe every moment of the music together so that we can continue to play together.”
Calidore formed in the early 2010s, while the members were students at the Colburn School of Music in Los Angeles. A busy competition schedule launched an equally-busy performing career, and connections to the Emerson String Quartet and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. While working with the Emerson Quartet at Stony Brook University in New York, the four musicians met then-Provost Dennis Assanis, who would become the University of Delaware’s President.
“When he came from Stony Brook to Delaware, he wanted to create something similar to what was going on at Stony Brook,” says. “He saw it as a very vital part of the university's life and culture of the community. And so that was the beginning of our relationship with the University of Delaware.”
As the University of Delaware’s Distinguished String Quartet in Residence, Meehan and his colleagues teach individual lessons and coach the university’s graduate string quartet. He says that working with the next generation of classical musicians gives him a rosy view of the art form’s future.
“They're a remarkable group, and they work with such dedication and such passion for the music that it is inspiring for us as the teachers, reminding us why we do what we're doing,” Meehan says.
While they stay busy teaching and performing, the quartet has also spent a lot of time in the recording studio over the years, performing on more than a dozen albums over the years. In February, they released their latest record, American Tapestry, which marks America’s 250th anniversary with music by John Williams, Wynton Marsalis, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and Samuel Barber.
The Calidore String Quartet performs at the University of Delaware on Monday, April 6 at 5:30 pm.
Delaware Public Media's arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
