Rolston String Quartet

Fresh off their all-Tchaikovsky debut album, “Souvenirs,” the Rolston String Quartet comes to Yardley Hall as part of the nine-day Heartland Chamber Musical Festival at the Midwest Trust Center. Their new release was recently named Recording of the Month by BBC Music Magazine.

Rolston was the first international ensemble to be awarded the prestigious Cleveland Quartet Award from Chamber Music America in 2018. This Canadian group also received grand prize at the 31st Chamber Music Yellow Springs Competition and was a candidate in the Astral National Auditions.

In addition to their concert, the Rolston String Quartet has been named the festival’s summer resident and will mentor students as they prepare for festival performances at MTC, July 30 through August 7.

Performers
Luri Lee, violin
Jason Issokson, violin
Hezekiah Leung, viola
Ari Evan, cello

Program

String Quartet in E Flat, Opus 64, No. 6 by Josef Haydn
String Quartet No. 8 by Dimitri Shostakovich
String Quartet No. 12, Op. 96, “American Quartet,” by Antonin Dvořák

Biography

The Rolston String Quartet was formed in the summer of 2013 at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity's Chamber Music Residency. They take their name from Canadian violinist Thomas Rolston, founder and longtime director of the Music and Sound Programs at the Banff Centre.

Their recent highlights include debut performances at Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, The Freer Gallery in Washington, D.C., and Chamber Music Houston. They also completed two major Canadian tours under the Prairie Debut and Debut Atlantic touring networks and three European tours in cities including Leipzig, Berlin, Lucerne, Heidelberg, Barcelona and Graz.

Their most recent season included concerts at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music, Texas Performing Arts, Chamber Music Northwest, Calgary Pro Musica and the Louvre Museum. Additional scheduled performances included performing with the chamber music societies of Detroit, Fort Worth, Kansas City, Philadelphia and Vancouver. The quartet’s artistry has been praised by Munich’s Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper for its “delicacy, slender elasticity, impeccable intonation and such eminent sense of tonal balance … This is a new bright star on the truly not empty string quartet sky of our day.”

Notable collaborations include performances with Janina Fialkowska, Gary Hoffman, Nobuko Imai, Miguel da Silva and David Shifrin, as well as the St. Lawrence and Dover quartets. Rolston is an associated artist at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Waterloo, Belgium, and previously served as the fellowship quartet-in-residence at the Yale School of Music and graduate quartet-in-residence at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. They have taught at the Yale School of Music, University of Toronto and the Bowdoin International Music Festival, among other institutions.

Their primary mentors include the Brentano Quartet, James Dunham, Norman Fischer and Kenneth Goldsmith, and they have received additional guidance from the St. Lawrence String Quartet, Barry Shiffman, Miguel da Silva and Alastair Tait.

Luri Lee plays a Carlo Tononi violin, generously on loan from Shauna Rolston Shaw. The ensemble performs on the Eugène Ysaÿe quartet of instruments. The set was made by Samuel Zygmuntowicz and is on generous loan from the El Pasito Association. The Rolston String Quartet is endorsed by Jargar Strings of Denmark.

The Heartland Chamber Music Festival is a partnership with JCCC Midwest Trust Center.