Easton has become a true mecca for extraordinary musical experiences. A case in point: Chesapeake Music’s upcoming concert featuring the award-winning Isidore String Quartet performing at the Ebenezer Theater on Saturday, October 5. The concert is the second in the 2024-2025 series of Interlude Concerts.
The Isidore String Quartet, winners of the 2023 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the 2022 14th Banff International String Quartet Competition, began as an ensemble at the Juilliard School in 2019 when their teachers recognized a certain magic about their unique sound. The quartet members are violinists Adrian Steele and Phoenix Avalon, violist Devin Moore, and cellist Joshua McClendon.
After the pandemic, the quartet reconvened at the Kneisel Hall Music Festival. Their Banff triumph resulted in extensive tours of North America and Europe, an appointment as the Peak Fellowship Ensemble in Residence at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and a two-week residency at Banff Centre, including a professionally produced recording.
The name Isidore pays tribute to the legendary violinist Isidore Cohen of the Juilliard String Quartet. The name also goes back in time to a Greek monk Named Isidore who concocted the first genuine vodka recipe for the Grand Duchy of Moscow.
The Isidore String Quartet has appeared in major venues in Chicago, Pittsburgh, Seattle, DC, San Antonio, Toronto, and Montreal and has collaborated with a host of eminent performers.
Outside the concert hall, the quartet worked with PROJECT: MUSIC HEALS US which provides encouragement, education, and healing to marginalized communities.
For Easton’s Interlude Concert, the quartet will perform the Mozart “Dissonance” Quartet, Bartok Quartet No. 2, and the Ravel Quartet. Award-winning violinist Phoenix Avalon explained that the quartet selected these three pieces because they wanted to, “explore the revolutionary sound worlds in the string quartet medium.” Avalon added that “the Mozart Quartet was truly groundbreaking for its time. The Bartok Quartet offers a folksy Hungarian experience, and the Ravel Quartet has an entirely different unique French sound filled with color and rhythm.”
The Isidore String Quartet’s mission is to “cultivate joyful, accessible, and intimate experiences that create community through in-depth relationships and explore the power of the collective to uplift the individual. The gloriously vital tradition of the string quartet is our playground to impact the world we live in and inspire others through the art of collaboration and play.”
Newly appointed Executive Director of the Chesapeake Music David Faleris added, “The Eastern Shore community is lucky indeed to have access to such an uplifting and joyful musical explosion of talent.”
Tickets for this moving musical experience on October 5 at the intimate and acoustically excellent Ebenezer Theater in Easton are $50. Chesapeake Music also offers discounted tickets for students and music educators, as well as a “buy-one-get-one” option for those who are new to Chesapeake Music and want to come with a friend. To purchase tickets for the concert, visit ChesapeakeMusic.org, and to learn more about the quartet, visit isidorestringquartet.com.