For our next season, we have lined up three wonderful Saturday evenings in June devoted to chamber music: Espressivo! on June 8, the Isidore String Quartet on June 15, and the Balourdet Quartet on June 22 (see individual Events below for details on each). You may purchase tickets to individual concerts or save on Subscription Tickets to all three! All three concerts will be held in Bard College’s acoustically exceptional Olin Hall.

HVCMC Co-Artistic Directors Jaime Laredo and Sharon Robinson launch the season with their piano quartet Espressivo! Anna Polonsky (piano), Jaime Laredo (violin), Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt (viola), and Sharon Robinson (cello), are joined by award-winning bassist Harold “Hal” Robinson in the following program:

• Felix Mendelssohn: Piano Quartet in C Minor, Op. 1, No. 1
• Franz Schubert: Piano Quintet in A Major, “The Trout,” D. 667
• Ralph Vaughan Williams: Quintet in C Minor

The highly acclaimed Isidore String Quartet was formed in 2019 with a vision to “revisit, rediscover, and reinvigorate” the repertory.  Heavily influenced by the idea of “approaching the established as if it were brand new, and the new as if it were firmly established,” the quartet returns to HVCMC for a second consecutive season.  Their program this summer includes In Memory by Grammy Award-winning composer Joan Tower, composed in 2002 and dedicated in honor of the late Margaret Shafer, Artistic Director of HVCMC from 1977-2000:

• Joseph Haydn: String Quartet in C Major, Op. 20, No. 2
• Joan Tower: In Memory, String Quartet No. 2, dedicated to Margaret Shafer
• Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 127 

Making their HVCMC debut, the prize-winning Balourdet Quartet is a recipient of a 2024 Avery Fisher Career Grant and Chamber Music America’s 2024 Cleveland Quartet Award.  Recent highlights include debuts at Carnegie and Wigmore Halls, and new string quartets by composers Karim Al-Zand and Paul Novak through grants from Chamber Music America (2021) and the Barlow Foundation (2023).  Currently the Graduate Quartet in Residence at the prestigious Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University and recent graduates of the New England Conservatory’s Professional String Quartet Program, the Balourdet concert concludes HVCMC’s 2024 June Concert Series with the following program:

• Wolfgang Amadé Mozart: String Quartet in D Minor, K. 421
• Karim Al-Zand: Strange Machines, String Quartet No. 4 (Chamber Music America Commission 2022)
• Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet in F Major, Op. 59, No. 1, “Razumovsky”