Aizuri Quartet

The Aizuri Quartet has earned widespread admiration from listeners and reviewers alike through its command of technique and breadth of expression, qualities it has brought to bear on both standard works and an array of modern pieces along with distinctive partnerships. Several leading American composers of the present day have supplied the ensemble with newly written music.

Established in New York during 2012, the quartet adopted its title from the intricate Japanese woodblock technique known as aizuri-e, which relies on blue pigment. Its founding roster consisted of violinists Miho Saegusa and Zoe Martin-Doike, violist Ayane Kozasa, and cellist Karen Ouzounian. Ariana Kim stepped in for Martin-Doike during 2015, after which Emma Frucht assumed the second-violin post in 2019. Early recognition arrived in the form of residencies at the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Music Institute near Chicago in 2014, the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia from 2014 to 2016, the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts in suburban New York from 2015 to 2016, and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art from 2017 to 2018. International acclaim followed with first-place honors at the 2015 Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition in London and the 2017 Osaka International Chamber Music Competition in Japan, while domestic success included victory in the M-Prize Chamber Arts Competition in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The group’s debut recording, Blueprinting, appeared in 2018 and featured Caroline Shaw’s newly commissioned Blueprint; the album earned a Grammy Award nomination for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Recording and was selected by National Public Radio as one of the finest classical releases of that year. Performances have taken the quartet to prominent American chamber-music series, among them virtual presentations during the COVID-19 pandemic at the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, New Orleans Friends of Chamber Music, and the 92nd Street Y in New York. Additional commissions have come from Lembit Beecher, Paul Wiancko, and Yevgeniy Sharlat. Musical partnerships have encompassed Celtic harpist Maeve Gilchrist, progressive rock guitarist Nels Cline, and shakuhachi player Kojiro Umezaki. The Cleveland Quartet Award for 2022–2024 was conferred upon the ensemble, which joined Cline for the 2021 release Douglas J. Cuomo: Seven Limbs and returned in 2023 on the Azica Records label with Earthdrawn Skies. The players advocate “an integrative approach to music-making, in which their teaching, performing, writing, arranging, curation and role in the community are all connected,” a philosophy reflected in their creation of the AizuriKids online concert series amid the COVID-19 pandemic.