Sunday, March 9, 2014 at 4:00 pm

Program

Wolf: Italian Serenade
Mozart: Quintet for clarinet & strings, K. 581
Brahms: Quintet for clarinet & strings, op. 115

One of only two wind players to have been awarded the Avery Fisher Prize since the award was established in 1974, clarinetist David Shifrin is in constant demand as an orchestral soloist, recitalist, and chamber music collaborator. He has appeared with many orchestras in the U.S. including those in Philadelphia, Minnesota, Dallas, Seattle, Houston, Milwaukee, and Detroit and with orchestras in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. In addition, he has served as principal clarinetist with the Cleveland Orchestra, the American Symphony Orchestra, the Honolulu and Dallas symphonies, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the New York Chamber Symphony. As a chamber musician he has collaborated frequently with such ensembles and artists as the Tokyo and Emerson String Quartets, Wynton Marsalis, and pianists Emanuel Ax and André Watts. As an artist member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 1989, he served as its artistic director from 1992 to 2004. Mr. Shifrin joined the faculty at the Yale School of Music in 1987 and was appointed Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society of Yale and Yale’s annual concert series at Carnegie Hall in September 2008. He has also served on the faculties of The Juilliard School, University of Southern California, University of Michigan, Cleveland Institute of Music and the University of Hawaii.

Hailed by The New York Times for its “precision, assertiveness and vigor” and by the San Francisco Classical Voice for its “gripping intensity” and “suspenseful and virtuoso playing,” the Amphion String Quartet is a winner of the 2011 Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition. It was recently chosen for two prestigious programs—the Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-In-Residence at the Caramoor Festival for the 2012-13 season and the CMS Two Program of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center with the ensemble’s three-year membership beginning in 2013-14. The members of the Quartet first joined together for a performance at Sprague Hall at the Yale School of Music in February 2009. The response by the audience was the inspiration behind their desire to pursue a career as the Amphion String Quartet. Recent honors include the 2012 Salon de Virtuosi Career Grant in New York; First Prize at the Hugo Kauder String Quartet Competition in New Haven, CT; and First Prize in the Piano and Strings category as well as the Audience Choice Award at the 2010 Plowman Chamber Music Competition in Columbia, MO.