Winners of the Grand Prize at the most recent Plowman Chamber Music Competition, First Prize at the Chamber Music Yellow Springs Competition and Second Prize at the M-Prize Chamber Arts Competition 2017, the Vera Quartet is currently Graduate Quartet-in-Residence at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, under the mentorship of the Pacifica Quartet.
Formed in 2015, the Vera Quartet quickly has begun to make a name for themselves. Since their inception, they have held residency at the Beethovenhaus in Bonn, Germany, as well as completed their first international tour in South Korea with performances at Kumho Art Hall, Seoul National University, and the Korea National University of the Arts. As Quartet-in-Residence of the Jacobs School of Music New Music Ensemble under David Dzubay, the quartet also recently collaborated with world-renowned pipa player Wu Man as part of the China Remixed Festival, performing Tan Dun’s Concerto for String Quartet and Pipa. The Vera Quartet is also involved in outreach projects in the Bloomington area and beyond; they have recorded pieces for the album 'Bloomingsongs' produced by the Jacobs School of Music’s Musical Beginnings and have partnered with Bloomington’s Musical Arts Youth Organization to teach and coach chamber music to members of their youth orchestra.
In 2017, the quartet was invited to participate in both the Robert Mann String Quartet Seminar and the Juilliard String Quartet Seminar in New York City, and was also one of five artists selected by NPR’s Performance Today to spend a week as the show’s Young Artist in Residence. The Vera Quartet has also taken part in the Chamber Music Residency program at the Banff Centre in Canada, and this past summer attended the Center for Advanced Quartet Studies at the Aspen Music Festival and School, where they gave the Aspen premiere of Augusta Read Thomas’s Selene for string quartet and percussion quartet after working closely with the composer.
Highlights of this season include the ensemble’s New York debut on the Schneider Concert Series and a tour through Spain as part of the AIE Clasicos en Ruta Series.
In addition to studying with the Pacifica Quartet, the Vera Quartet has also been coached by members of the Juilliard, Cleveland, Brentano, St Lawrence, Tokyo, American, Mendelssohn, and London Haydn quartets, as well as Atar Arad, Mauricio Fuks, and Peter Stumpf.
Free recital (retiring collection)