Juilliard String Quartet

The Juilliard String Quartet was founded in 1946 at the Juilliard School in New York by composer William Schuman, president of the School. The original members were violinists Robert Mann and Robert Koff, violist Raphael Hillyer and cellist Arthur Winograd. Current members are violinists Areta Zhulla and Ronald Copes, violist Roger Tapping, and cellist Astrid Schween. Areta Zhulla most recently joined the quartet, replacing Joseph Lin in September 2018. Since the Quartet's inception in 1946, it has been the quartet-in-residence at the Juilliard School. It has received numerous awards, including four Grammys and membership in the National Academy Recording Arts and Sciences’ Hall of Fame. In February 2011, the group received the NARAS Lifetime Achievement Award for its outstanding contributions to recorded classical music.
The quartet plays a wide range of classical music, and has recorded works by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Bartók, Debussy and Shostakovich and many others, while also promoting more contemporary composers such as Elliott Carter, Ralph Shapey, Henri Dutilleux and Milton Babbitt. It has performed with other noted musicians such as Aaron Copland, Glenn Gould, Benita Valente and also (in its earlier days) with the great scientist Albert Einstein. They can be heard on the soundtrack of Immortal Beloved movie.
The quartet began recording with Sony Classical (formerly Columbia Records and CBS Masterworks) in 1949, and the group's discography currently numbers over 100 items, including repertory both well-traveled and unfamiliar. In 1950, the quartet made the first of at least three appearances at the Peabody Mason Concerts in Boston. In that concert, they performed the world premiere of Martin Boykan's String Quartet of 1949. Their early 1950s recordings of the six Bartok string quartets on the Columbia label and various works recorded for the RCA Living Stereo label (c. 1958-1962), including perhaps even more vivid and incisive readings of Bartok' six quartets and a complete Beethoven quartet cycle, are particularly acclaimed.
In 2015, the quartet released an app for Apple's iOS entitled "Juilliard String Quartet – An Exploration of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden". The recording was issued separately on audio by Ulysses Arts. The app was co-produced by the London-based app developer Touchpress and The Juilliard School. The app features the quartet in a performance of Franz Schubert’s celebrated String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, better known as "Death and the Maiden."
With unparalleled artistry and enduring vigor, the Juilliard String Quartet continues to inspire audiences around the world. Founded in 1946 and hailed by the Boston Globe as "the most important American quartet in history", the Juilliard draws on a deep and vital engagement to the classics, while embracing the mission of championing new works, a vibrant combination of the familiar and the daring. Each performance of the Juilliard Quartet is a unique experience, bringing together the four members’ profound understanding, total commitment, and unceasing curiosity in sharing the wonders of the string quartet literature.
Ms. Areta Zhulla joins the Juilliard Quartet as first violinist beginning in 2018-19 season which includes extended tours in Europe and Asia, with many return engagements all over the USA. The season will also introduce a newly commissioned String Quartet by the wonderful young composer, Lembit Beecher, and some piano quintet collaborations with the celebrated Marc-André Hamelin. Having recently celebrated its 70th anniversary, the Juilliard String Quartet marked the 2017-18 season with return appearances in Seattle, Santa Barbara, Pasadena, Memphis, Raleigh, Houston, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen. It continued its acclaimed annual performances in Detroit and Philadelphia, along with numerous concerts at home in New York City, including appearances at Lincoln Center and Town Hall. Adding to its celebrated discography, the JSQ released a new album featuring the world premiere recording of Mario
Davidovsky’s Fragments (2016), together with Beethoven Quartet Op. 95 and Bartók Quartet No. 1, which will shortly be issued on the SONY label. Highlights of concert programming throughout the 2017-18 season included other visionary works by Beethoven, Bartók, and Dvořák, as well as James MacMillan’s haunting and evocative Quartet No. 2, Why Is This Night Different? (1998).
Celebrating one of the great collaborative relationships in American music, Sony Classical’s reissue of the Juilliard Quartet’s landmark recordings of the first four Elliott Carter String Quartets together with the 2013 recording of the Carter Quartet No. 5 traces a remarkable period in the evolution of both the composer and the ensemble. The quartet’s recordings of the Bartók and Schoenberg Quartets, as well as those of Debussy, Ravel and Beethoven, have won Grammy Awards, and in 2011 the JSQ became the first classical music ensemble to receive a lifetime achievement award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
Devoted master teachers, the members of the Juilliard String Quartet offer classes and open rehearsals when on tour. The JSQ is string quartet in residence at Juilliard and its members are all sought-after teachers on the string and chamber music faculties. Each May, they host the five-day internationally recognized Juilliard String Quartet Seminar. During the summer, the JSQ works closely on string quartet repertoire with students at the Tanglewood Music Center.
 
BIOGRAPHY, Fall 2018