Calidore String Quartet - Biography

The Calidore String Quartet was supported by BBT between 2016 and 2018.  For an up-to-date biography go to imgartists.com

Jeffrey Myers violin
Ryan Meehan violin
Jeremy Berry viola
Estelle Choi cello

The Calidore String Quartet received a 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant, the 2017 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award and the $100,000 Grand-Prize of the 2016 M-Prize International Chamber Arts Competition. The same year the quartet was also the first North American ensemble to win a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship and joined BBC Radio 3’s New Generation Artists scheme. The 2018-19 season is the Calidore’s third year in residence with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s The Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two).

Founded in Los Angeles in 2010, the name elides ‘California’ and ‘doré’ (French for ‘golden’) in honour of the quartet’s spiritual home, the ‘golden state.’ Within two years it had won prizes both in the US, at the Fischoff, Coleman, Chesapeake, and Yellow Springs competitions , and internationally, at the 2012 ARD Competition Munich and Hamburg International Chamber Music Competition.

The Calidore String Quartet perform regularly throughout North America, Europe and Asia at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall, Berlin Konzerthaus, Brussels BOZAR, Cologne Philharmonie, Seoul’s Kumho Arts Hall and major festivals, including the BBC Proms, Verbier, Ravinia, Mostly Mozart, Music@Menlo, Rheingau, East Neuk and Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. In 2018-19, as well as returning to Wigmore Hall and Lincoln Center, it debuts in major series in Munich, Copenhagen, the Netherlands, Atlanta, Toronto, San Francisco and Denver.

Regular collaborators include the Emerson String Quartet and pianists Inon Barnatan and Marc-Andre Hamelin, while the quartet’s commitment to contemporary works led to the world première of Pulitzer-prize winner Caroline Shaw’s newest string quartet Three Essays at the 2018 BBC Proms in 2018, and this season’s world première of a new Marc-Anthony Turnage work at Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Society. It has also given world premières of works by Hannah Lash and Benjamin Dean Taylor. Alongside master classes across the US in its passionate support of music education and mentoring young musicians, the Caldiore String Quartet serves as Artists-in-Residence at both the University of Delaware, University of Toronto and the University of Michigan.

Supported by its BBT Fellowship, the Quaret’s debut album for Signum Records, Resilience, was released in October 2018.  A second album, Babel, was released in 2020.

It is truly an honour to be part of the BBT family which is comprised of our inspirational colleagues and mentors. The Trust’s incredible depth of knowledge both artistically and of the music business is what has enabled us to make an impact with the projects we have chosen to pursue. So many of our dreams and ambitions have been and continue to be realized thanks to the dedicated efforts and generous support of the BBT!

Photographs by Sophie Zhai