The New York Times, October 18, 2009
An article about the Pacifica Quartet, a widely admired, award-winning string quartet that has just taken over a plum residency at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The Pacifica Quartet takes over for the Guarneri String Quartet, which held the position for an amazing 43 seasons prior to playing its New York farewell concert in May. (My Times review of that event is here.)
My thanks to Sibbi Bernhardsson and Masumi Per Rostad of the Pacifica Quartet for taking the time out of a busy schedule to sit down for a long, generous interview, of which this article barely scratched the surface. Thanks, too, to Hilde Limondjian, booker of the Met Museum's concert series -- and the one whose enthusiastic initial report brought the Guarneris into the museum in the first place -- as well as to Elliott Carter: distinguished composer, great artist and my first interview subject to include "they gave a concert of my music back when I was 100" in a sentence.
Finally, I'd like to express my gratitude to Karl Kramer, director of the School of Music at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, for taking the time to grant an interview. While I ultimately did not work that conversation into the final article, what Dr. Kramer had to say was of tremendous value in providing a clear picture of just how versatile and busy the Pacifica Quartet players are.
Comments