All-Shubert program at Bourgie Hall, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Saturday April 30

Universally known as one of the best string quartets in the world, the Emerson Quartet’s unparalleled list of achievements over three decades includes more than thirty acclaimed recordings and nine Grammy Awards.

Formed in 1976 and based in New York City, the Emerson was one of the first quartets formed with two violinists – Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer – alternating in the first chair position. They are joined by violist Lawrence Dutton, and cellist Paul Watkins, who replaced founding cellist David Finckel in 2013, the Quartet’s 37th season.

Beloved by audiences in Montreal and around the world, the Quartet returns to the Montreal Chamber Music Festival for the third and final concert in its “Celebrity Series,” on Saturday, April 30 at 8:00 pm at Bourgie Hall; part of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Festival founder and world renowned cellist Denis Brott will perform Franz Shubert’s Quintet in C with The Emerson String Quartet.

“The performances were everything we have come to expect from this superb ensemble: technically resourceful, musically insightful, cohesive, full of character and always interesting.”  – The New York Times 

Denis Brott - Emerson String Quartet -

Montreal Chamber Music Festival founder Denis Brott will perform with the Emerson String Quartet on April 30.

The reconfigured group has been greeted with impressive accolades. “One of the characteristics of the Emerson Quartet is that its players all have the ability and the instruments to produce a sweet and glossy sound – but do so sparingly. Instead, they establish a chromatic scale of timbres that range from dry and tart over clean and zesty all the way to lustrous and singing.” (The New York Times)

With over 80 quartet performances each season, the quartet is beginning a tour that will take them them across North America. As an exclusive artist for SONY Classical, the Emerson recently released Journeys, featuring Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence and Schoenberg’s Verklaerte Nacht. In January of 2015, the Quartet received the Richard J. Bogomolny National Service Award, Chamber Music America’s highest honor, in recognition of its significant and lasting contribution to the chamber music field. Their performance at The Montreal Chamber Music Festival is part of a North American tour. The Montreal concert at Bourgie Hall follows Houston appearance and precedes a New York City concert.

Dedicated to promoting chamber music in all its diverse forms through collaborations with jazz and other artistic disciplines such as dance, theatre, film and visual arts, the Montreal Chamber Music Festival has received three OPUS awards (1999, 2001 and 2009), a Québec Tourism Grand Prize (2007) and the 2014 Event award from Destination Centre-ville Montréal. For more information please see: www.festivalmontreal.org The Emerson String Quartet concert is sponsored by The Alex U. Soyka Foundation.

The Emerson String Quartet Tickets: $58.83 includes taxes and fees. Student tickets: $25.49. Available at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal box office, by phone at 514-285-200 or mbam.qc.ca.