Biography
The New York ensemble Sybarite5 works to broaden both the existing body of music for string quintet and the audiences that hear it, pursuing that aim through fresh commissions together with transcriptions drawn from sources well beyond the classical sphere.
Double bassist Louis Levitt assembled the group during the mid-2000s at Colorado’s Aspen Music Festival; violinists Sarah Whitney and Sami Merdinian, cellist Laura Metcalf, and violist Angela Pickett soon joined him. In 2008 Sybarite5 became the first string quintet accepted into the Aspen Advanced String Quartet Studies program, and the ensemble maintained a continuing link with the festival as the AFMS Alumni Ensemble. Several decisive career advances arrived in the early 2010s: the quintet released its debut EP, Disturb the Silence, in 2010, a recording that included pieces by rock band Radiohead and tango master Astor Piazzolla, and then captured multiple awards at the 2011 Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition. The following year the group presented its second album, Everything in Its Right Place, at a Carnegie Hall release concert.
As of the mid-2020s the personnel included founding members Levitt and Merdinian alongside violinist Suliman Tekalli, violist Caeli Smith, and cellist Laura Andrade. Sybarite5 has now appeared in 44 of the 50 U.S. states, among them a concert presented by the Anchorage Concert Association in Alaska. Domestic engagements have taken the ensemble to such notable sites as the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., Carnegie Hall in New York, and the multifaceted New York space Le Poisson Rouge (now LPR). Festival credits encompass Ravinia outside Chicago, Wolf Trap near Washington, and Interlochen in Michigan. International performances have included ChamberFest Ottawa, the New Docta International Music Festival in Cordoba, Argentina, and the Osaka Fest in Osaka, Japan. Sybarite5 continues to interleave newly commissioned works with arrangements of material from an array of traditions, among them jazz saxophonist John Coltrane, composer and ethnomusicologist Komitas, Piazzolla, and folk icon Pete Seeger. Further recordings have followed, among them the 2020 album Live from New York, It’s Sybarite5—the group’s first release on the Bright Shiny Things label—and the 2023 album Collective Wisdom, also issued on that imprint.
Double bassist Louis Levitt assembled the group during the mid-2000s at Colorado’s Aspen Music Festival; violinists Sarah Whitney and Sami Merdinian, cellist Laura Metcalf, and violist Angela Pickett soon joined him. In 2008 Sybarite5 became the first string quintet accepted into the Aspen Advanced String Quartet Studies program, and the ensemble maintained a continuing link with the festival as the AFMS Alumni Ensemble. Several decisive career advances arrived in the early 2010s: the quintet released its debut EP, Disturb the Silence, in 2010, a recording that included pieces by rock band Radiohead and tango master Astor Piazzolla, and then captured multiple awards at the 2011 Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition. The following year the group presented its second album, Everything in Its Right Place, at a Carnegie Hall release concert.
As of the mid-2020s the personnel included founding members Levitt and Merdinian alongside violinist Suliman Tekalli, violist Caeli Smith, and cellist Laura Andrade. Sybarite5 has now appeared in 44 of the 50 U.S. states, among them a concert presented by the Anchorage Concert Association in Alaska. Domestic engagements have taken the ensemble to such notable sites as the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., Carnegie Hall in New York, and the multifaceted New York space Le Poisson Rouge (now LPR). Festival credits encompass Ravinia outside Chicago, Wolf Trap near Washington, and Interlochen in Michigan. International performances have included ChamberFest Ottawa, the New Docta International Music Festival in Cordoba, Argentina, and the Osaka Fest in Osaka, Japan. Sybarite5 continues to interleave newly commissioned works with arrangements of material from an array of traditions, among them jazz saxophonist John Coltrane, composer and ethnomusicologist Komitas, Piazzolla, and folk icon Pete Seeger. Further recordings have followed, among them the 2020 album Live from New York, It’s Sybarite5—the group’s first release on the Bright Shiny Things label—and the 2023 album Collective Wisdom, also issued on that imprint.
Albums
Collective Wisdom
2023
Live From New York, It's Sybarite5
2020
Outliers
2019
Disturb the Silence
2010
Live
2009
Singles
Spring
2023
Mangas
2023
Movement and Location (Arr. for String Quintet by Paul Sanho Kim)
2023
Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
2020
Future Shock
2020
Alabama
2020
Live
