LPR Presents: The Westerlies / Attacca Quartet

First Prize winners of the 7th Osaka International Chamber Music Competition in 2011, top prizewinners and Listeners’ Choice Award recipients in the 2011 Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition, and winners of the Alice Coleman Grand Prize at the 60th annual Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition in 2006, the internationally acclaimed Attacca Quartet has become one of America's premier young performing ensembles. Praised by Strad for possessing “maturity beyond its members’ years,” they were formed at the Juilliard School in 2003, and made their professional debut in 2007 as part of the Artists International Winners Series in Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall. From 2011-2013 they served as the Juilliard Graduate Resident String Quartet, and for the 2014 – 2015 season the Attacca Quartet was named the Quartet in Residence for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The Attacca Quartet recently completed a recording project of the complete works for string quartet by John Adams (released on Azica Records in March 2013). In his review for the New York Times, Steve Smith praised this “vivacious, compelling set,” describing the Attacca Quartet’s playing as “exuberant, funky, and…exactingly nuanced.” The Boston Globe also praised the release, stating: “Few [recent recordings] are as consequential as ‘Fellow Traveler,’…superb performances.” The album was the recipient of the 2013 National Federation of Music Clubs Centennial Chamber Music Award. The Attacca Quartet has been honored with both the Arthur Foote Award from the Harvard Musical Association and the Lotos Prize in the Arts from the Stecher and Horowitz Foundation.

2014 – 2015 marks the fifth season in New York and the second season in Ontario of "The 68," an ambitious project in which the Attacca Quartet will perform all sixty-eight of Haydn’s string quartets on a special series they have created and self-produce. In April 2015 they will release their second album with Azica Records, their own arrangement of Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ. Other recent highlights include: appearances in Madrid performing all of John Adams’s works for string quartet, including his Absolute Jest for String Quartet and Orchestra, soloing with the Spanish National Orchestra under the composer’s direction; tours of Ireland and Japan; a four-concert run at the Melbourne Festival in Australia; numerous concerts in New York and across the United States, Canada, and Latin America.

The Attacca Quartet has engaged in extensive educational and community outreach projects, serving as guest artists and teaching fellows at the Lincoln Center Institute, Vivace String Camp in New York and Animato Summer Music Camp at Florida International University in Miami. Since 2006, they have performed in yearly benefit concerts supporting the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation's efforts. The members of the Attacca Quartet currently reside in New York City.