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The Pacifica Quartet

  • Northbrook Presbyterian Church 22055 West 14 Mile Road Beverly Hills, MI, 48025 United States (map)

VENUE CHANGE: This event has moved to Northbrook Presbyterian Church

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VENUE CHANGE: This event has moved to Northbrook Presbyterian Church |

New Venue Location:
Northbrook Presbyterian Church
22055 W 14 Mile Rd.
Beverly Hills, MI 48025

Use Code TRYDIG
for a free Digital Access Ticket


ABOUT THIS PERFORMANCE

Celebrating the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence with music of Barber, Dvořák, and more.

The Pacifica Quartet celebrates America 250 with a program featuring Samuel Barber’s Quartet Op. 11 with its moving Adagio movement, two new works by Jennifer Higdon and Gabriela Lena Frank, and Antonín Dvořák’s evocative American string quartet.


PROGRAM

Barber | Quartet in B minor, Op. 11
Gabriela Lena Frank | The Edge of Everything: Elegy for Rachel Louise Carson
Jennifer Higdon | Steps for Justice, for narrator and string quartet

INTERMISSION

Dvořák | String Quartet in F major, Op. 96, "American"


“engrossing, characterful…with a luminescent tranquility and spine-tingling intensity”
— New York Times

SNEAK PEAK

ABOUT THE ENSEMBLE-IN-RESIDENCE

The Pacifica Quartet
With a career spanning three decades, the multiple GRAMMY® Award-winning Pacifica Quartet is known for delivering performances that are “engrossing, characterful...with a luminescent tranquility [and] spine-tingling intensity” (The New York Times). The Quartet appears during the 2025-26 season across North America and abroad, including a world premiere tour of their newest program, American Portraits, featuring new works by Jennifer Higdon and Gabriela Lena Frank with Oscar-nominated film icon Sigourney Weaver, in New York, Washington, D.C., and London.

An ardent advocate for living composers, the Pacifica Quartet has commissioned and premiered works by Julia Wolfe, Shulamit Ran and James Lee III, among others. The Quartet has also proven itself to be the preeminent interpreter of string quartet cycles, harnessing the group’s incredible stamina to portray each composer’s evolution.

The ensemble’s acclaimed recordings include Elliott Carter’s Quartets Nos. 1-5, the complete Shostakovich cycle, Leo Ornstein’s Piano Quintet with Marc-André Hamelin, the Brahms Piano Quintet with Menahem Pressler, and the Brahms and Mozart Clarinet Quintets with Anthony McGill. Their most recent GRAMMY®-winning album, Contemporary Voices, showcases works by Shulamit Ran, Jennifer Higdon, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. A second recording with McGill, American Stories – featuring works by Richard Danielpour, James Lee III, Ben Shirley, and Valerie Coleman – was nominated for a 2024 GRAMMY® Award.

Formed in 1994, the Pacifica Quartet quickly rose to prominence, winning the 1998 Naumburg Chamber Music Award, 2022 Chamber Music America Cleveland Quartet Award, and 2016 Avery Fisher Career Grant. Based in Bloomington, Indiana, the Pacifica Quartet has served as full-time faculty and Quartet-in-Residence at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music since 2012.


Due to the possibility of unforeseen circumstances, program and artists are subject to change.