ABOUT THIS PERFORMANCE
The Pacifica Quartet’s second 2026-27 program commemorates the 200th anniversary of the death of Ludwig van Beethoven with two of his late quartets: the F major Opus 135, and the B-flat major Opus 130 with its original finale, the Grosse Fuga.
“engrossing, characterful…with a luminescent tranquility and spine-tingling intensity”
SNEAK PEEK
ABOUT THE ENSEMBLE-IN-RESIDENCE
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.