Scripps College presents the Cypress String Quartet at the Bessie Bartlett Frankel Festival of Chamber Music on Sunday, September 26, at 3 p.m. in Balch Auditorium. The renowned chamber music ensemble will perform the work of Mozart, Stravinsky and Beethoven, as well as the work of contemporary composer Anna Weesner.The concert is free and open to the public.
The Cypress String Quartet—Cecily Ward and Tom Stone, violins; Ann Gregg, viola; and Jennifer Kloetzel, cello—was formed in 1996, and since then has performed to growing acclaim throughout North America. The ensemble won the 1999 Chamber Music Yellow Springs Competition, and was featured in Chamber Music Magazine as a "Generation X ensemble to watch." The quartet has been heard frequently on National Public Radio’s "Performance Today" and "Open Air" and was featured on WQXR’s "Young Artists Showcase" in New York City.
The quartet is equally committed to performance and education, and recently presented programs to more than 3000 students in the Philadelphia area under the auspices of the Philadelphia Orchestra. They have also performed for public schools in Telluride, Colorado; Baltimore, Maryland, and the San Francisco Bay Area.
The quartet’s reputation has also expanded among chamber music enthusiasts around the world. In the past three years, the ensemble participated in the Amadeus Quartet Seminar in London, where they played in public master classes for Norbert Brainin, Siegmund Nissel, and Martin Lovett and performed two concerts in the Duke’s Hall of the Royal Academy of Music. The quartet was in residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada in the winter of 1997 and held a fellowship at the Aspen Music Festival Center for Advanced Quartet Studies during the summer of 1998. The ensemble has also worked closely with cellist Bonnie Hampton and with members of the Cleveland, Orion, Emerson, Mendelssohn and Juilliard Quartets.
The Cypress String Quartet resides in San Francisco.
At the Frankel Festival of Chamber Music, the quartet will perform Mozart’s Quartet in F Major, K. 590; Sudden, Unbidden by Weesner; Concertino by Stravinsky, and Beethoven’s Quartet in F Minor, Op. 95 (Serioso). For more information, call (909) 621-8280.