Lark Quartet
Biography Lark Quartet
Lark Quartet
continues to delight audiences with its energy, passionate commitment and artistry since its inception in 1985. The Lark has performed in many of the world’s great cultural centers including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Library of Congress, London’s Wigmore Hall, L’Opéra de la Bastille in Paris, and appeared at international festivals including Lockenhaus, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, Mostly Mozart, Istanbul Festival, Wolftrap and the Beethoven Festival in Moscow. Promising to deliver “a performance of grace, proportion and burnished brilliance” (The Washington Post), The Lark Quartet offers audiences new insights into the art of chamber music through programs that begin with the ensemble virtuosity of the western tradition and continue into recent music from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, all while regularly sharing the stage with dynamic collaborators.
The Lark has a distinguished tradition of working closely with the country’s most celebrated composers and commissioning new works, many of which have become mainstays of the chamber music repertoire. This history includes works such as Billy in the Darbies by William Bolcom with Stephen Salters, baritone; Scenes from the Poet’s Dreams by Jennifer Higdon with Gary Graffman, piano; Quartet no. 1 Musica celestis and Quartet no. 2 Musica instrumentalis (winning the 1997 Pulitzer Prize) by Aaron Jay Kernis; Piano Quintet by Paul Moravec with Jeremy Denk, Quartet no. 2 In Memoriam and Piano Quintet no. 2, by Peter Schickele; Early That Summer by Julia Wolfe; Viaggio in Italia by Giovanni Sollima; Intarsio by Glen Velez and Big Time by Nico Muhly (commissioned by the Central Vermont Chamber Music Festival) for Lark and Yousif Sheronick, percussion. The Quartet continues to build on its commitment to providing free concerts of great music presented with intelligence and vitality through its series Lark About Town. These family concerts, free to all and open to the public, will be held throughout the city of New York, Westchester and New Jersey.
With a discography comprising more than a dozen CDs, the Lark has recorded for the Decca/Argo, Arabesque, Bridge, ERI, Endeavor, Koch, Point and New World labels. Lark Quartet: Composing America, comprising works by Adams, Bolcom, Moravec and Copland, was released on Bridge Records in 2014 to international acclaim. WQXR of New York said of the quartet’s 2013 release of An Exaltation of Larks: Music of Jennifer Higdon: “the strings soar as a single entity” and chose it as Album of the Week upon its release in March of 2013. The Lark served as Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst from 2004-08 and has performed and taught as part of residencies across the United States. The Lark Quartet members, Deborah Buck and Basia Danilow, violins, Kathryn Lockwood, viola and Caroline Stinson, cello, all live in the New York City area with their families.
