Mivos Quartet

The Mivos Quartet ranks among the foremost American ensembles dedicated to new music, engaging composers and performers across an expansive spectrum of current stylistic approaches. Over extended periods the group develops fresh string quartet repertoire through sustained, close partnerships with creators.

Formed in New York in 2008 while its members pursued graduate study in contemporary music, the quartet’s 2023 roster comprised violinists Olivia De Prato and Maya Bennardo, violist Victor Lowrie Tafoya, and cellist Tyler J. Borden. A steadily expanding roster of composers has joined the ensemble in commissioning and shaping new pieces. Its first recording appeared in 2010 on the Tzadik label, presenting Ned Rothenberg’s Quintet for clarinet and strings with the composer as soloist. Two years later the group issued an Ex Cathedra album devoted to Patrick Higgins’s String Quartet No. 2.

Performances have taken the quartet to prominent new-music platforms and festivals throughout the United States and abroad, among them the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Noon to Midnight marathon, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Wien Modern in Austria, and Shanghai New Music Week in China. Composer collaborations encompass Jeffrey Mumford, Michaela Catranis, George Lewis, and Kate Soper. In recognition of its sustained work fostering new repertoire, the ensemble received the 2019 Dwight and Ursula Mamlok Prize for Interpreters of Contemporary Music. Additional projects have involved figures from multimedia and improvised domains, including Rothenberg, jazz vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant, and guitarist-composer Mary Halvorson, recipient of a 2019 MacArthur Fellowship.

Recordings have been released on ATMA Classique, Kairos, and Nonesuch; in 2023 the quartet moved to Deutsche Grammophon for its account of Steve Reich’s string quartets. At that point the ensemble’s discography surpassed twenty-five titles.