CASSATT QUARTET
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Hailed for its “mighty rapport and relentless commitment,” the Cassatt String Quartet has performed throughout the world for four decades, with appearances at Alice Tully Hall and Weill Recital Hall; Tanglewood Music Center; the Kennedy Center; Théâtre des Champs-Élysées; Centro National de las Artes; Maeda Hall; and Beijing’s Central Conservatory.
The Cassatt Quartet, founded in 1985, joyfully approaches its 40th year, to be celebrated with an array of collaborations, concerts, and contemporary music. Their anniversary calendar will include a busy schedule of performances in the U.S. and internationally, including an Italian tour alongside guitarist Eliot Fisk; recording the great quartet Modes by Dorothy Rudd Moore, alongside other string quartets by Black American women; teaching residencies at major universities and conservatories; and, in proud Cassatt Quartet fashion, premieres of important commissions, including a piano quintet by Victoria Bond and a new work for string quartet by Joan Tower, to be premiered at Maverick Concerts in September 2025.
The members of the Cassatt Quartet are violinists Muneko Otani and Jennifer Leshnower; violist Emily Brandenburg; and cellist Gwen Krosnick. The Quartet is named for Mary Cassatt, the great 19th- and 20th-century painter who – in addition to being the only American to exhibit in Paris alongside the Impressionists – did devoted, lifelong work in support of women’s equality and right to vote.
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Hailed for its “mighty rapport and relentless commitment,” the Cassatt String Quartet has performed throughout the world for four decades, with appearances at Alice Tully Hall and Weill Recital Hall; Tanglewood Music Center; the Kennedy Center; Théâtre des Champs-Élysées; Centro National de las Artes; Maeda Hall; and Beijing’s Central Conservatory. The Cassatts have given concerts on the quartet of Stradivari instruments at the Library of Congress; and, as resident quartet at the University of Buffalo, performed three complete Slee Beethoven String Quartet cycles.
The Cassatt Quartet, founded in 1985, joyfully approaches its 40th year, to be celebrated with an array of collaborations, concerts, and contemporary music. Their anniversary calendar will include a busy schedule of performances in the U.S. and internationally, including an Italian tour alongside guitarist Eliot Fisk; recording the great quartet Modes by Dorothy Rudd Moore, alongside other string quartets by Black American women; teaching residencies at major universities and conservatories; and, in proud Cassatt Quartet fashion, premieres of important commissions, including a piano quintet by Victoria Bond and a new work for string quartet by Joan Tower, to be premiered at Maverick Concerts in September 2025. The CSQ will premiere new works written for them, as well, by Mari Kimura and Shirish Korde; share performances with pianists Magdalena Baczewska and Emely Phelps, with clarinetist Bixby Kennedy, and with jazz singer Dominique Eade; and appear in concert across the Northeast and Midwest United States.
The Quartet’s prolific discography includes over forty recordings, among them performances of music by Steven Stucky, Daniel S. Godfrey, Gerald Cohen, Sebastian Currier, and Samuel Adler. They have recorded for the Koch, Naxos, New World, Point, CRI, Tzadik, and Albany labels. The CSQ’s playing has been featured on NPR’s “Performance Today,” WGBH Boston, WQXR and WNYC of New York, Canada’s CBC Radio, and Radio France. The Cassatt’s projects have been featured three times in Alex Ross’s “10 Best Classical Recordings” column in The New Yorker.
The Cassatts, devoted to nurturing young musicians, have given classes at Columbia, Cornell, Princeton, and Syracuse Universities; the University of Pennsylvania and Bard Conservatory of Music; the American Academy in Rome and the Toho School in Tokyo; and the Bowdoin International Music Festival. The CSQ has been in residence since 1995 at the Seal Bay Festival of American Chamber Music in Vinalhaven, Maine; and, since 2005, at Cassatt in the Basin, an educational residency in West Texas. The CSQ’s members hold teaching positions at Columbia University, Williams College, Riverdale Country School, and Kneisel Hall.
The members of the Cassatt Quartet are violinists Muneko Otani and Jennifer Leshnower; violist Emily Brandenburg; and cellist Gwen Krosnick. The Quartet is named for Mary Cassatt, the great 19th- and 20th-century painter who – in addition to being the only American to exhibit in Paris alongside the Impressionists – did devoted, lifelong work in support of women’s equality and right to vote.
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Hailed for its “mighty rapport and relentless commitment,” the Cassatt String Quartet has performed throughout the world for four decades, with appearances at Alice Tully Hall and Weill Recital Hall; Tanglewood Music Center; the Kennedy Center; Théâtre des Champs-Élysées; Centro National de las Artes; Maeda Hall; and Beijing’s Central Conservatory. The Cassatts have given concerts on the quartet of Stradivari instruments at the Library of Congress; and, as resident quartet at the University of Buffalo, performed three complete Slee Beethoven String Quartet cycles.
The Cassatt Quartet, founded in 1985, joyfully approaches its 40th year, to be celebrated with an array of collaborations, concerts, and contemporary music. Their anniversary calendar will include a busy schedule of performances in the U.S. and internationally, including an Italian tour alongside guitarist Eliot Fisk; recording the great quartet Modes by Dorothy Rudd Moore, alongside other string quartets by Black American women; teaching residencies at major universities and conservatories; and, in proud Cassatt Quartet fashion, premieres of important commissions, including a piano quintet by Victoria Bond and a new work for string quartet by Joan Tower, to be premiered at Maverick Concerts in September 2025. The CSQ will premiere new works written for them, as well, by Mari Kimura and Shirish Korde; share performances with pianists Magdalena Baczewska and Emely Phelps, with clarinetist Bixby Kennedy, and with jazz singer Dominique Eade; and appear in concert across the Northeast and Midwest United States.
Highlights of the Cassatt Quartet’s recent seasons included major performances, premieres, and recordings of works by Tania León, Victoria Bond, Chen Yi, Adolphus Hailstork, Wang Jie, Joan Tower, Zhou Long, Shirish Korde, Anthony Paul De Ritis, Allen Shawn, and Daniel S. Godfrey; collaborations with Ursula Oppens, David Jackson, Dov Scheindlin, Dominique Eade, Eliot Fisk, Doris Stevenson, Magdalena Baczewska, Haim Avitsur, and Kyo-Shin-An Arts; hometown concerts in the New York area, including performances at Cutting Edge Concerts at Symphony Space, Bethany Arts in Ossining, and Bargemusic in Brooklyn; and appearances at Treetops Chamber Music Society, Maverick Concerts, and Music Mountain. They have held recent teaching residencies at the Hartt School, Bard Conservatory, Bennington College, Texas Tech University, College of the Holy Cross, and Columbia University’s Music Department and Office of the Core Curriculum.
The Quartet’s prolific discography includes over forty recordings, among them performances of music by Steven Stucky, Daniel S. Godfrey, Gerald Cohen, Sebastian Currier, and Samuel Adler. They have recorded for the Koch, Naxos, New World, Point, CRI, Tzadik, and Albany labels. The CSQ’s playing has been featured on NPR’s “Performance Today,” WGBH Boston, WQXR and WNYC of New York, Canada’s CBC Radio, and Radio France. The Cassatt’s projects have been featured three times in Alex Ross’s “10 Best Classical Recordings” column in The New Yorker.
In addition to honoring the CSQ’s recordings, critics have written extensively and glowingly of the group’s live performances. The New York Times gave praise to the quartet’s “bold and probing account;” SoundWordSight described the group’s "wonderful performance, with a beautifully integrated sound;” and ConcertoNet wrote: "Wherever one encounters the Cassatt Quartet, one is astonished both at their prowess and their unfailing inspiration.” A recent description in the Boston Musical Intelligencer read: “The all-female Cassatt Quartet played as true believers, a stance required ever and again of the performers by [Tania León’s] sometimes ferocious, sometimes benign, but always ingenious and approachable score…[They played] with assurance that obviated the need to answer the bedeviling question posed by so much contemporary music: ‘Why this note? Why not that one?’ The Cassatts, it seems, have the answer: ‘Listen. Just listen. You’ll understand.’ And we do. That is the gift of the composer and the performers.”
In the group’s early years, the Cassatt String Quartet served as the inaugural group in the Juilliard School’s Graduate String Quartet Residency. They have, in the decades since, received major awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Federation of Music Clubs, the USArtists International, Chamber Music America, and ASCAP; the Banff International String Quartet Competition and the Fischoff and Coleman Chamber Music Associations; the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust and Meet the Composer; and the Amphion, Copland, Fromm, and Alice M. Ditson Music Foundations. Since 1995, the ensemble has been on the artist roster for the New York State Council on the Arts, which enables the CSQ to play dozens of community concerts annually throughout New York City and New York State.
The Cassatts, devoted to nurturing young musicians, have given classes at Columbia, Cornell, Princeton, and Syracuse Universities; the University of Pennsylvania and Bard Conservatory of Music; the American Academy in Rome and the Toho School in Tokyo; and the Bowdoin International Music Festival. The CSQ has been in residence since 1995 at the Seal Bay Festival of American Chamber Music in Vinalhaven, Maine; and, since 2005, at Cassatt in the Basin, an educational residency in West Texas. The CSQ’s members hold teaching positions at Columbia University, Williams College, Riverdale Country School, and Kneisel Hall.
Noted for its passionate advocacy and skill in repertoire both new and old, the Cassatt Quartet has collaborated with members of the Tokyo, Cleveland and Vermeer Quartets; pianists Ursula Oppens and Marc-André Hamelin; clarinetist David Shifrin, flutist Ransom Wilson, and jazz pianist Fred Hersch; the Trisha Brown Dance Company; and composers Louis Andriessen, Kaija Saariaho, Joan Tower, John Corigliano, Tania León, Shulamit Ran, Chen Yi, and Augusta Read Thomas, and Victoria Bond.
The members of the Cassatt Quartet are violinists Muneko Otani and Jennifer Leshnower; violist Emily Brandenburg; and cellist Gwen Krosnick. The Quartet is named for Mary Cassatt, the great 19th- and 20th-century painter who – in addition to being the only American to exhibit in Paris alongside the Impressionists – did devoted, lifelong work in support of women’s equality and right to vote. -