First Monday at Jordan Hall: Beethoven's World

Acclaimed for its bold interpretive strength and electrifying performances, the Verona Quartet is the 2020 recipient of Chamber Music America’s prestigious Cleveland Quartet Award. The Quartet’s members represent four different nations, but their singular approach and unanimity of purpose in both musical and cultural cooperation have quickly earned the group a reputation as an “outstanding ensemble...cohesive yet full of temperament.” (The New York Times)

The Verona Quartet is one of the most sought after string quartets of its generation, delighting audiences at venues worldwide such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall and Melbourne Recital Hall, in addition to appearances at La Jolla Summerfest, Chamber Music Northwest, Bravo! Vail and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. The group’s 2019-2020 season includes tours across North America, Asia and South America; upcoming highlights include performances at The Kennedy Center, Library of Congress, Celebrity Series of Boston, Cliburn Concerts’ Beethoven@250 festival, Lunenberg Academy of Music Performance, and Schneider Concert Series.

Since winning the 2015Concert Artists Guildcompetition, the Verona Quartet has cultivated a progressive approach to collaboration and programming including numerous cross-cultural and inter-disciplinary enterprises. Projects include performances with dancers from Brooklyn’s Dance Heginbotham, artistic exchange with traditional Emirati poets in the UAE and collaborations through the Kennedy Center’s Direct Current Festival with folk supergroup I’m With Her as well as cellist Joshua Roman. Other notable collaborators include Anne-Marie McDermott, Orion Weiss, Cho-Liang Lin, Atar Arad, Paul Katz, David Shifrin, Charles Neidich, and Renée Fleming.

The Verona Quartet has developed a consummate reputation for its compelling interpretations of contemporary music, and regularly champions and commissions works from composers such as Julia Adolphe, Sebastian Currier, Richard Danielpour, as well as Michael Gilbertson, whose Quartet was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Forthcoming album releases include Gilbertson’s Quartet, as well as the Verona Quartet’s debut album, Diffusion, on Azica Records featuring works by Ravel, Szymanowski and Janáček.
 

The Verona Quartet rose to international prominence by sweeping top prizes at competitions across four continents, including the Wigmore Hall, Melbourne, Osaka and M-Prize International Competitions. The Quartet currently serves as the inaugural Quartet-in-Residence with North Carolina’s Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle, where it performs over ten concerts and forty community engagement activities annually. Strongly committed to education, the Verona Quartet is also Quartet-in-Residence for the Indiana University Summer String Academy andNew England Conservatory Preparatory School. Further positions include the 2017-18 Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts as well as guest residencies at numerous institutions worldwide including Oberlin Conservatory of Music, USC Thornton School of Music, The Hartt School, UNC School of the Arts, Syracuse University, Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance and the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music.

Kirsten Docter

First-prize wins at the Primrose International and American String Teachers Association Viola Competitions launched Kirsten Docter on a career that includes a 23-year tenure with the Cavani Quartet, concerts on major series and festivals throughout North America, Europe, and Australia, and numerous appointments as a master class clinician and teacher.

        During her time as violist of the award-winning Cavani String Quartet, Docter performed at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Kennedy Center, Festival de L’Epau in France, and the Honolulu Chamber Music Society. She appeared in features on the public radio programs Performance Today and St. Paul Sunday and television programs on NBC, CBS, ABC, and PBS.

        Docter’s festival appearances include performances at the Aspen Music Festival, Banff Centre for the Arts, Madeline Island, Mimir (in Texas and Melbourne, Australia), Sitka Summer Music, Interlochen, Kneisel Hall, Yale Summer School of Music and Art at Norfolk, and the Perlman Music Program. She has collaborated with Itzhak Perlman, Jaime Laredo, Alisa Weilerstein, Stephanie Blythe, Nathan Gunn, Alessio Bax, and members of the Cleveland, Juilliard, Takács, Emerson, Borodin, and Amadeus string quartets. Her work can be heard on the Azica, Albany, New World, and Gasparo labels. 

        Docter formerly served on the chamber music and viola faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music and has given numerous master classes at universities and music schools. She has been a jury member of the Primrose International Viola, Fischoff National Chamber Music, and Sphinx competitions. In addition to her position at Oberlin, she is on the viola faculty of the Perlman Music Program and the Bowdoin International Music Festival.

Darrett Adkins

Darrett Adkins has commissioned and been the dedicatee of many important new works for cello, including concertos by Su Lian Tan and Philip Cashian, which are both featured, along with Richard Wernick’s Concerto for Cello and Ten Players, on the CD release Myth and Tradition.  He recently premiered Stephen Hartke’s concerto, Da Pacem, with Robert Spano and the Oberlin Orchestra. He is the dedicatee of Jeffrey Mumford’s concerto, billowing pockets brightly layered, which Adkins premiered with the Cleveland Chamber Symphony. He performed the U.S. premieres of Birtwhistle’s Meridian and Donatoni’s Le Ruisseau sur l’escalier at Tanglewood, and the New York premieres of Rolf Wallin’s Grund at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, Arne Nordheim’s Tenebrae (Alice Tully Hall), Messiaen’s Concerto for Four Instruments (Carnegie Hall), and Berio’s Sequenza XIVa (with the International Contemporary Ensemble), which Adkins also recorded for Naxos’ complete set of Sequenzas.  His solo cello CD project, Hypersuite II, interleaved a contemporary recital program with a cello suite of Bach. 

        A lifelong, avid chamber musician, Adkins performs and records in the United States and Europe with the Lions Gate Trio. He is a former member of the Zephyr Trio and the Flux Quartet, with which he gave the first complete performance of Morton Feldman’s Quartet II and made the subsequent recording on Mode Records. He has recorded with the Juilliard Quartet and been a guest at the festivals of Melbourne, Oslo Chamber Music, Ojai, Kneisel Hall, Aspen, Tanglewood, and Chautauqua. He has performed standard concerti with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Tokyo Philharmonic, Suwon Philharmonic, Aspen Festival Orchesra, National Symphony of the UFF in Rio de Janeiro, and the symphonies of New Hampshire and North Carolina.

        Mr. Adkins serves on the cello and chamber music faculties of the Oberlin Conservatory, the Juilliard School, and the Aspen Music Festival and School. His students are featured prominently in every aspect of musical life—as performers, recording artists, composers and pedagogues.