Friday, October 21, 2016 — New York, NY – The Attacca Quartet are excited to announce Recently Added, a new series exploring the string quartet works of contemporary composers. Each year, the Attacca will select three living composers they feel have made significant contributions to the repertoire, and will celebrate their work by performing their complete string quartets. Season one will take place at National Sawdust in Brooklyn, featuring the music of Caroline Shaw on December 11 at 5PM, Michael Ippolito on February 19 at 8PM, and John Adams, whose complete works the group recorded for their acclaimed Fellow Traveler album, on April 2 at 3PM.

“Their playing is exuberant, funky and, in instances like the eerily creeping “Alligator Escalator,” more exactingly nuanced.”

– Steve Smith in The New York Times, on Fellow Traveler

Said the quartet of the new initiative: “As our relationship to Joseph Haydn carried past our 6-year project, hereto we look forward to the lasting relationships we will create with these vibrant string quartet composers as we embark on a journey exploring the newest great works for the string quartet: to find the masterpieces which have been Recently Added to the rich and diverse canon of the genre. National Sawdust presented itself as the ideal partner for this project for their forthright commitment to nurturing the most exciting and powerful new music in an ideal setting.”

Complimentary to Recently Added, the Attacca will also launch another long-term project, Based on Beethoven, tonight at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church at 7:30. Based on Beethoven will feature performances of the complete Beethoven string quartets paired with works inspired by Beethoven from the “Recently Added” series. The first performance will include Beethoven’s Op. 18 No. 1 and Op. 127, as well as Caroline Shaw’s Blueprint. Additional scheduled performances this season are January 20 at 7:30PM and May 12 at 7:30PM.

“Few [recent quartet recordings] are as consequential as “Fellow Traveler,” which collects the complete quartet music of American composer John Adams in superb performances by the young Attacca Quartet (Azica). These works aren’t as renowned as Adams’s orchestral works, but by digging hard into their funky eclecticism, the Attacca makes a forceful case for them.”
– The Boston Globe

“Adams constructs a number of highly virtuoso and impressive rhythmic studies, matched on this recording by the Attacca Quartet’s superlative technical and artistic execution”
– Gramophone Magazine

About the 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 earned a place as one of America’s foremost young classical ensembles. Praised by The 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 to 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 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The quartet consists of Amy Schroeder, violin, Keiko Tokunaga, violin, Nathan Schram, viola, and Andrew Yee, cello.

All concert dates and news can be found on the Quartet’s website: attaccaquartet.com