About the Ives Quartet
PASSIONATE PERFORMANCES
Passion pours from the Ives Quartet
The Quartet has established a reputation for passion, precision, and provocative programming, winning accolades for playing that shows both super-refinement and visceral, rock-and-roll intensity.
The Ives Quartet presents an annual home concert series in Silicon Valley and the Greater San Francisco Bay Area in addition to performing nationally and internationally at noted chamber music series and festivals.
INNOVATIVE PROGRAMMING
“Whether the group was playing Beethoven, Dvorak or Quincy Porter, the 20th-century composer whose works are becoming an Ives specialty, the music felt thoroughly absorbed, idiomatic, performed from the inside-out.”
San Jose Mercury NewsInspired by the passionate, artistic commitment and unique temperament of American composer Charles Ives (1874–1954), the quartet has attracted critical enthusiasm for its “practice of reveling in the unfamiliar,” championing an eclectic repertoire that combines established masterworks with underappreciated gems, neglected scores of early-twentieth-century America, and specially commissioned new pieces.
The Quartet’s collaborations with acclaimed guest artists and composers add variety and diversity to the Quartet’s performances.
ENGAGING ARTISTRY
The Ives Quartet has captivated audiences from San Francisco to New York; London to Taiwan.
In a departure from convention, the Quartet combines players with American and European experience and sensibilities, drawing on the talent and experience of the international, solo, orchestral, chamber, and recording careers of its artist members – Bettina Mussumeli, violin; Susan Freier, violin; Jodi Levitz, viola; and Stephen Harrison, cello.
The quartet members share a strong commitment to the special challenges of the string-quartet literature and its performance. This value is expressed in the Quartet’s open-minded and critical engagement with the personal and private worlds of composers, exploration of the unique languages of string-quartet composers, and the introduction and immersion of audiences in these languages with carefully curated concert presentations.
Drawing on their personal commitment to shaping the next generation of classical-music performers, the Quartet devotes a significant portion of its year-round work to string-ensemble coaching and music education. Frequently, the Quartet visits Trinity College in Charles Ives’s Hartford for residency activities.
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