The multiple Grammy Award-winning PACIFICA QUARTET closes our 61st season on Friday, April 16, 2027, at Libby Gardner Concert Hall on the University of Utah campus. Quartet-in-Residence at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music and recipients of the Naumburg Chamber Music Award, the Cleveland Quartet Award, and an Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Pacifica Quartet has performed at Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, and the Kennedy Center. The New York Times praises their playing as "engrossing, characterful...with a luminescent tranquillity and spine-tingling intensity."
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Whether you’re a seasoned chamber music lover or brand new to classical music concerts, we are thrilled you’re considering spending an evening with the Chamber Music Society! Please check out the resources below to help plan your special night out, or consider attending one of our free Pre-Concert Talk at 6:30 p.m. before the performance. If you have any additional questions, don’t hesitate to contact us. We hope to see you soon!
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Featured Performers
PACIFICA QUARTET
Simin Ganatra, violin
Austin Hartman, violin
Mark Holloway, viola
Brandon Vamos, cello
“...nothing short of phenomenal... ”
— The Telegraph
With a career spanning three decades, the multiple GRAMMY® Award-winning Pacifica Quartet has achieved international recognition as one of the finest chamber ensembles performing today. Known for delivering performances that are “engrossing, characterful…with a luminescent tranquillity [and] spine-tingling intensity” (The New York Times), the Quartet is celebrated for its virtuosity, exuberant performance style, and fearless repertory choices. Its sound, distinguished by “warmth of phrasing, dynamic control and superbly coordinated ensemble balance” (Gramophone Magazine), has solidified the ensemble as one of the most essential voices in American chamber music.
The Pacifica Quartet appears this season across North America and abroad, including a world premiere tour of their newest program, American Portraits, with Oscar-nominated film icon Sigourney Weaver at the 92nd Street Y in New York; Washington Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.; and Wigmore Hall in London. American Portraits is centered on two world-premiere commissions for narrator and string quartet honoring visionaries who helped shape our nation – champion of justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is celebrated by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Jennifer Higdon, and environmental trailblazer Rachel Carson by GRAMMY® nominee Gabriela Lena Frank. The 2025-2026 season also brings the Pacifica Quartet to ArtPower at the University of California, San Diego; the Oneppo Chamber Music Series at Yale University; the Calgary Pro Musica Society; Friends of Music; Hillsdale College; Kutztown University Presents; the Eureka Chamber Music Series; and the Linton Chamber Music Series.
Formed in 1994, the Pacifica Quartet quickly rose to prominence, winning chamber music’s top competitions, including the 1998 Naumburg Chamber Music Award. In 2002, the ensemble received Chamber Music America’s Cleveland Quartet Award and was named to Lincoln Center’s Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two). Four years later, it received the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, affirming its position among the foremost American quartets. With its powerful energy and captivating, cohesive sound, the Pacifica has established itself as the embodiment of the contemporary American string quartet sound.
An ardent advocate for living composers, the Pacifica Quartet has commissioned and premiered works by Keeril Makan, Julia Wolfe, and Shulamit Ran. Ran’s Glitter, Doom, Shards, Memory – commissioned in partnership with the Music Accord consortium, Wigmore Hall, and Tokyo’s Suntory Hall – received its New York premiere with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In 2024, the Quartet premiered James Lee III’s Double Standard – commissioned by Carnegie Hall and Shriver Hall Concert Series – with soprano Karen Slack. Based on a poem by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, the work was widely acclaimed for its vivid narrative power, with one critic describing the performance’s “spine-tingling intensity” (The New York Times).
The Pacifica Quartet has proven itself to be the preeminent interpreter of string quartet cycles, harnessing the group’s singular focus and incredible stamina to portray each composer’s evolution, often over the course of just a few days. Its acclaimed presentations have included highly praised performances of the complete Carter cycle in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and Houston; the Mendelssohn cycle in Napa, Australia, New York, and Pittsburgh; the monumental Shostakovich cycle in Chicago, New York, Montreal, and London; and the Beethoven cycle in New York, Denver, St. Paul, Chicago, Napa, and Tokyo, where the Quartet gave an unprecedented presentation of five concerts in three days at Suntory Hall.
The ensemble’s acclaimed discography reflects its adventurous spirit. Its GRAMMY® Award-winning recordings of Elliott Carter’s Quartets Nos. 1-5 on Naxos and the complete Shostakovich cycle on Cedille Records – praised by The Telegraph as “nothing short of phenomenal” – are now reference points for those repertoires. Other notable collaborations include 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 (Cedille Records), showcases works by Shulamit Ran, Jennifer Higdon, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich; the Chicago Tribune named it among the “Best Classical Recordings of 2020,” praising the Quartet’s “unmistakable and apt ferocity.” A second recording with Anthony McGill, American Stories, featured world premiere recordings by Richard Danielpour, James Lee III, and Ben Shirley, as well as a piece by Valerie Coleman, and was nominated for a 2024 GRAMMY® Award.
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. They previously held residencies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2003-2012), the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (2009-2012), and the University of Chicago, where they served as resident performing artists for 17 years.
For more information, please visit www.pacificaquartet.com.
