IMG Artists is proud to welcome the multiple award-winning Calidore String Quartet to its roster for worldwide general management. Calidore (Jeffrey Myers, Ryan Meehan, Jeremy Berry and Estelle Choi) joined IMG Artists for European management in 2018, and will continue to be represented in that region by Artist Managers Aga Mikus and Elena Kostova from the company’s London office. New York-based Vice President and Artist Manager Linda Petrikova assumes the role of the Quartet’s General Manager.
Calidore String Quartet said: We are honored to join the illustrious IMG Artists roster alongside the Emerson Quartet. IMGA is a company with a global perspective, and we are very excited to expand our relationship to worldwide representation. We are thankful to have such an incredible team in Linda, Aga and Elena overseeing our career across the globe.”
Linda said, “The superb musicians of the Calidore Quartet take a special place on our roster, following in the footsteps of their mentors, the Emerson String Quartet. We are delighted to start supporting this outstanding ensemble’s activities worldwide.”
The Calidore String Quartet has been praised by The New York Times for its “deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct” and by the Los Angeles Times for its balance of “intellect and expression.” After their Kennedy Center debut the Washington Post proclaimed that “Four more individual musicians are unimaginable, yet these speak, breathe, think and feel as one.” The Calidore String Quartet has enjoyed an impressive number of accolades, including a 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant, and the 2017 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award. The Calidore made international headlines as winner of the $100,000 Grand-Prize of the 2016 M-Prize International Chamber Music Competition, the largest prize for chamber music in the world. The quartet was also the first North American ensemble to win the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship and was named BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists, an honor that brings with it recordings, international radio broadcasts and appearances in Britain’s most prominent venues and festivals.
In the 2018/19 season, the Calidore returns to Wigmore Hall and Lincoln Center and makes its debut on major series in Munich, Copenhagen, the Netherlands, Atlanta, Toronto, San Francisco and Denver. They continue to collaborate in concerts with the Emerson String Quartet as well as artists such as the pianists Inon Barnatan, Marc-Andre Hamelin, Pavel Kolesnikov, Anne-Marie McDermott and Michael Brown, violinists Jennifer Pike, Arnaud Sussmann and Elena Bushka, violist Matthew Lipman and guitarist Sharon Isbin. They presented the world premiere of Pulitzer-prize winner Caroline Shaw’s newest string quartet “Three Essays” at the BBC Proms and perform it throughout the season in Washington D.C., Portland, Toronto and the University of Delaware. 2018-19 is the Calidore’s third year in residence with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two) and they perform the world-premiere of Massarosa by Mark-Anthony Turnage with bassoonist Peter Kolkay in May 2019 at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
In summer 2019 the Calidore return to the Verbier Festival, Wigmore Hall and Lincoln Center and appear at the Bowdoin International Music Festival, Incontri in Terra di Sienna and Cervo festivals (Italy), Eine Kleine Summer Music in Victoria, BC, Chamber Music Northwest, Bellingham Festival of Music and Ventura Music Festival Association.
The Calidore String Quartet regularly performs in prestigious venues throughout North America, Europe and Asia such as Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall, Berlin Konzerthaus, Brussels BOZAR, Cologne Philharmonie, Seoul’s Kumho Arts Hall and at festivals, including the BBC Proms, Verbier, Ravinia, Mostly Mozart, Music@Menlo, Rheingau, East Neuk and Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
Resilience, the Calidore String Quartet’s debut album for Signum Records was released October 2018 and includes quartets by Mendelssohn, Prokofiev, Janáček and Golijov. The quartet’s other recordings feature quartets by Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn recorded live in concert at the 2016 Music@Menlo festival; Bach, Mozart and Bartók from 2018 Music@Menlo; their debut album of quartets by Mendelssohn and Haydn and an album on the French label Editions Hortus, with music commemorating the World War I centennial.
The Calidore String Quartet is committed to mentoring and educating young musicians, students and audiences. The Calidore serves as String Quartet in Residence at the University of Delaware and University of Toronto.
Using an amalgamation of “California” and “doré” (French for “golden”), the ensemble’s name represents a reverence for the diversity of culture and the strong support it received from its home of origin, Los Angeles, California, the “golden state.”
Click to Watch the Calidore String Quartet Perform on NPR’s Tiny Desk
