Calidore String Quartet

The Calidore String Quartet was founded at the Colburn School in Los Angeles in 2010. Within two years,the quartet won grand prizes in virtually all the major US chamber music competitions and top prizes in several international venues. In 2021 the Calidore members joined the faculty of the University of Delaware School of Music and serve as artistic directors of the newly established Graduate String Quartet Fellowship Residency and their own concert series at the University of Delaware. The Calidore is currently in residence with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York. The Quartet regularly performs in prestigious venues  and major festivals across the world. It has also given world premieres of works by noted contemporary composers and collaborated with artists such as Joshua Bell, Emerson String Quartet, Inon Barnatan, and Sharon Isbin.

The Calidore String Quartet is recognized as one of the world’s foremost interpreters of a vast chamber music repertory, from the cycles of quartets by Beethoven and Mendelssohn to works of celebrated contemporary voices like György Kurtág, Jörg Widmann, and Caroline Shaw. The Los Angeles Times described the musicians as “astonishing,” their playing “shockingly deep,” approaching “the kind of sublimity other quartets spend a lifetime searching.” The New York Times noted the Quartet’s “deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct,” and BBC Music Magazine said the Calidore’s performances “penetrate right to the heart of the music.”

In their most ambitious recording project to date, the Calidore is set to release the complete Beethoven’s String Quartets for Signum Records in the 24/25 season. Volume I, containing the late quartets, was released in 2023 to great critical acclaim. Their previous recordings on Signum include titles Babel with music by Schumann, Shaw and Shostakovich, and Resilience with works by Prokofiev, Janáček, Golijov and Mendelssohn.

Gabriela Montero

Pianist Gabriela Montero’s visionary interpretations and unique compositional gifts have garnered her critical acclaim and a devoted following on the world stage. Born in Venezuela, Montero started her piano studies at age four, making her concerto debut at age eight in her hometown of Caracas. This led to a scholarship from the government to study privately in the USA and then at the Royal Academy of Music in London with Hamish Milne, where she is also a fellow. Celebrated for her exceptional musicality and ability to improvise, Montero has performed with many of the world’s leading orchestras while also being frequent recitalist and chamber musician on the international stage. Anthony Tommasini remarked in The New York Times that “Montero’s playing had everything: crackling rhythmic brio, subtle shadings, steely power…soulful lyricism…unsentimental expressivity.”

Montero’s most recent album, released in 2019, features her own “Latin” Concerto and Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major. Her previous recording features Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and her first orchestral composition, Ex Patria, a tone poem designed to illustrate and protest Venezuela’s descent into lawlessness, corruption, and violence. This recording won Montero her first Latin Grammy® for Best Classical Album. Other recordings include the award winning Bach and Beyond, the Grammy® nominated Baroque, and  Solatino, a recording of works by Latin American composers.

​Montero is a committed advocate for human rights, whose voice regularly reaches beyond the concert hall. She was named an Honorary Consul by Amnesty International in 2015 and recognized with Outstanding Work in the Field of Human Rights by the Human Rights Foundation for her ongoing commitment to human rights advocacy in Venezuela. She has spoken and performed twice at the World Economic Forum in Davos.