THE VERONA QUARTET TO BECOME THE JUILLIARD SCHOOL’S
NEW GRADUATE RESIDENT STRING QUARTET
Verona Quartet Members – Violinists Jonathan Ong and Dorothy Ro,
Violist Abigail Rojansky, and Cellist Warren Hagerty – Will Coach With the Juilliard String Quartet
and Teach During Juilliard’s 2015-16 Academic Year as Lisa Arnhold Fellows
Juilliard Presents the Verona Quartet at the Lisa Arnhold Memorial Recital
Saturday, May 7, 2016 at 8 p.m. in Alice Tully Hall
NEW YORK –– Juilliard announced that the Verona Quartet has been named the school’s graduate resident string quartet, beginning September 2015. The Verona Quartet (members Jonathan Ong, Dorothy Ro, Abigail Rojansky, and Warren Hagerty) has won numerous accolades and awards and is quickly establishing themselves as one of the most exciting young string quartets on the music scene today. Their name pays tribute to Shakespeare’s use of Verona as a setting in a number of monumental works.
The Verona Quartet will give the Lisa Arnhold Memorial Recital on Saturday, May 7, 2016 at 8 p.m. in Alice Tully Hall. Part of the quartet’s residency award at Juilliard, the recital is named on behalf of the funders’ family member.
As Arnhold Fellows, the members of the Verona Quartet have lessons with members of the Juilliard String Quartet, and they assist the Juilliard String Quartet with its ensemble and chamber music instruction in addition to other teaching duties. Juilliard’s Arnhold residencies are one year in length; recipients are eligible to return once, for a maximum residency of two years. At the successful completion of the residency, quartet members are awarded Artist Diplomas in String Quartet Studies at Juilliard.
This season concludes the Aeolus Quartet’s Arnhold residency. Other Juilliard graduate quartets-in-residence have been the Afiara, Attacca, Avalon, Biava, Calder, Cassatt, Chiara, Corigliano, Essex, Lark, Maia, Magellan (now renamed the Whitman String Quartet), Miró, St. Lawrence, and Shanghai.
The Verona Quartet
About the Verona Quartet
Hailed by critics as “thoughtful, impressive musicians” (Cleveland Classical), the Verona Quartet has won numerous accolades and awards, and is quickly establishing themselves as one of the most exciting young string quartets on the music scene today. Within barely two years of their formation, they captured the 2nd prize and ProQuartet-CEMC Prize at the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition in London (formerly London International String Quartet Competition); the Alice Coleman Grand Prize at the Coleman Chamber Music Competition; First Prize and Audience Prize at the Chesapeake International Chamber Music Competition; First Prize in the Kuttner String Quartet Competition; Silver Medal at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition; and the Bronze Medal at the 8th Osaka International Chamber Music Competition, Japan, where critics lauded their “sensational, powerhouse performance.” (Classical Voice America).
The Verona Quartet has performed across North America, Asia, and Europe, in venues such as Wigmore Hall (London, England), Izumi Hall (Osaka, Japan), the National Theatre (Abu Dhabi, UAE), and the Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C.). They have also appeared on National Public Radio, “The Weekly Special” on PBS, Abu Dhabi Classical FM, the Candlelight Concert Society (Baltimore, Maryland), Amadeus Concert Series (McLean, Virginia), Music at St. Luke’s (New York), and the “Music in the Loft” concert series in Chicago’s historic Fine Arts Building. Upcoming appearances include the Schneider Concert Series in NYC, a quartet residency at Music in the Vineyards in Napa valley, California, and their Alice Tully Hall debut in May 2016.
The Quartet has been visiting artists at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Indiana University’s String Academy, as well as the historic Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, Germany, where they studied Beethoven’s original manuscripts in-depth and worked with renowned Haydn and Beethoven scholars at the Haydn and Beethoven Institutes.
In April 2015, the Verona Quartet was quartet-in-residence at the Abu Dhabi Chamber Music Festival. In addition to their multi-venue concert tour, they collaborated with composers at New York University-Abu Dhabi, and gave master classes at the British School-Al Khubairat, American Charter School, and NYU-AD. They also worked with the local Emirati poets at Khalifa University, and collaborated with the poets in concerts pairing music from mainstream classical repertoire with Arabic poetry recitations.
In addition to their performance commitments, the Verona Quartet members are strong proponents of community engagement and education. In the past two years, the quartet has established a relationship with the city of Danville, Illinois, where they curated a concert series and gave outreach performances and master classes across elementary, middle and high schools in the city. Their work with developing young musicians on performance and practice skills has resulted in an increase in public school music class enrollment to almost double the average of the State of Illinois.
Members of the Verona Quartet hail from the United States, Singapore, and Canada, and count among their alma maters, Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, Cleveland Institute of Music, Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, and Eastman School of Music. They were the inaugural graduate quartet-in-residence at Indiana University, where as Jacobs Fellows, they were mentored chiefly by the Pacifica Quartet, Alexander Kerr, Atar Arad, and Eric Kim. The Quartet as also worked with artists such as Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yo-Yo Ma, Paul Kantor, Jerry Horner, Paul Katz, Peter Salaff, and members of the American, Brentano, Cavani, Tokyo, and London Haydn quartets.
This fall 2015, they will become Juilliard’s graduate resident string quartet, and as Lisa Arnhold Fellows, they will work with members of the Juilliard String Quartet and assist them in chamber music instruction at the school.
For further information, please visit the Verona Quartet’s website at: Verona Quartet.
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