Pacifica Quartet

Based in Bloomington, Indiana, the Pacifica Quartet ranks among America’s foremost chamber groups and has devoted particular attention to presenting full cycles of works by selected composers.

The ensemble originated in southern California during 1994. Its founding lineup comprised violinists Simin Ganatra and Sibbi Bernhardsson, violist Kathryn Lockwood, and cellist Brandon Vamos; by the mid-2020s the personnel consisted of Ganatra, Vamos, violinist Austin Harman, and violist Mark Holloway. An early Naumburg Chamber Music Award in 1998, together with additional honors, secured the group an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2006. Its first recording appeared in 2000 on Cedille, devoted to String Quartets by Easley Blackwood. That same year Gramophone placed the quartet on its cover among five emerging string ensembles singled out for notice, and Musical America named it ensemble of the year in 2009.

Pacifica has concentrated on complete traversals of the quartets of Beethoven, Shostakovich, Mendelssohn, and Elliott Carter, frequently delivering these marathons across only a few consecutive days. Such projects have reached major halls internationally, including a three-evening presentation of the Carter cycle at Suntory Hall in Tokyo. The players have participated in chamber series throughout North America while regularly advocating new scores, among them premieres of quartets by Keeril Makan and Shulamit Ran. From 2003 to 2012 they held faculty posts at the University of Illinois; they subsequently joined the University of Indiana faculty and assumed leadership of the Center for Advanced Quartet Studies at the Aspen Music Festival and School.

More than fifteen recordings have followed, issued principally on Naxos and Cedille. During the 2010s the quartet issued a four-album series titled The Soviet Experience that surveyed quartets by Dmitri Shostakovich alongside those of his contemporaries. In 2015 Hyperion released the group’s recording of Leo Ornstein’s seldom-heard piano quintet, performed with pianist Marc-André Hamelin. Cedille documented a 2019 collaboration with guitarist Sharon Isbin on Souvenirs of Spain & Italy. Contemporary Voices appeared in 2020, followed in 2022 by American Stories, which featured clarinetist Anthony McGill and received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance.