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The Jasper String Quartet has been hailed as “sonically delightful and expressively compelling” (The Strad) and as having played “flashingly, brilliantly, [and] gloriously, with excellent interplayer communication” (The Santa Fe New Mexican). The communication comes naturally as J and Rachel are married and all four members are close friends, living within a block of each other in New Haven, CT.
Winners of the Grand Prize and the Audience Prize at the 2008 Plowman Chamber Music Competition, the Grand Prize at the 2008 Coleman Competition, First Prize at Chamber Music Yellow Springs 2008, and the Silver Medal at the 2008 and 2009 Fischoff Chamber Music Competitions, the Jaspers are currently the graduate quartet-in-residence at the Yale School of Music, studying with the Tokyo String Quartet.
The Jaspers are the 2009-10 Ernst C. Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence at the Caramoor Center for Music and Arts, joining an elite group of previous Stiefel Quartets including the Miro, Pacifica, and Jupiter Quartets. In 2009, they were the first ensemble to win the Yale School of Music’s Horatio Parker Memorial Prize, an award established in 1945 and selected by the faculty for “best fulfilling Dean Parker’s lofty musical ideals”. In addition, the Jaspers were finalists in the 2009 Naumburg Chamber Music Competition and the 2008 Concert Artists Guild Competition.
Originally formed as a student ensemble at Oberlin Conservatory, the Jaspers began pursuing a professional career when they became Rice University’s graduate quartet-in-residence in 2006 studying with James Dunham, Norman Fischer, and Kenneth Goldsmith. The quartet has performed across the United States and in Canada, Norway, England, Italy, and Japan.
The Jasper Quartet is dedicated to performing pieces emotionally significant to its members ranging from Haydn and Beethoven through Ligeti, Webern, and Ades. Next season they are beginning a series of programs called Understanding… through music!. These programs aim to explore a country, time, or event through its music by connecting repertoire and historical or social happenings through writings and in-concert talking. The first program explores the music of the Eastern European nations of Hungary and the Czech Republic. The second focuses on the Second Viennese School and the innovation of music with Beethoven and Webern.
This summer they will be performing Mendelssohn’s Octet with the Tokyo String Quartet at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and participating in the Pacific Music Festival in Japan and La Jolla SummerFest in California. The Jaspers have attended the Aspen Music Festival's Center for Advanced Quartet Studies, the Emerson Quartet International Chamber Music Workshop, the Juilliard String Quartet Seminar, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada. In the Melba and Orville Roleffson Residency at the Banff Centre they embarked on "guerilla chamber music," performing concerts in unusual settings around Alberta. During their time at the Shepherd School of Music the quartet collaborated with the Houston Friends of Chamber Music to bring quartet programs into local high schools. Next year, they will continue this work at Caramoor in addition to coaching undergraduate ensembles at Yale.
The Jasper String Quartet is named for Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada, a place unmatched for its inherent and dramatic beauty – qualities integral to the Jasper’s belief in the power of string quartet performance. Its members come from St. Louis, MO (J), Tokyo, Japan (Sae), Fairbanks, AK (Sam) and Ann Arbor, MI (Rachel).
For more information please visit www.jasperquartet.com.
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