Carnegie Hall

The Aizuri Quartet has established a unique position within today’s musical landscape, infusing its music making with infectious energy, joy, and warmth. The ensemble cultivates curiosity in listeners and invites audiences into the concert experience through its innovative programming and the depth and fire of its performances. 

Praised by The Washington Post for “astounding” and “captivating” performances that draw from its notable “meld of intellect, technique, and emotions,” the Aizuri Quartet was named the recipient of the 2022 Cleveland Quartet Award by Chamber Music America and was awarded the Grand Prize at the 2018 M-Prize Chamber Arts Competition. The quartet’s debut album, Blueprinting, featured new works written for the Aizuri Quartet by five American composers; it was released by New Amsterdam Records to critical acclaim (“In a word, stunning,” I Care If You Listen), nominated for a 2019 Grammy Award, and named one of NPR Music’s Best Classical Albums of 2018. The Aizuri Quartet’s follow-up to Blueprinting will be released in 2023 on Azica Records.

The Aizuri Quartet continues its innovative approach to programming in the 2022–2023 season with the Aizuri Songbook: arrangements of popular songs, lieder, and song-inspired quartets, featuring vocal performances by Ms. Ouzounian and Ms. Saegusa. Spring 2022 saw The Art of Translation, exploring the highly personal and expressive ways in which composers transform visual art and poetry into music and consider the dynamic nature of art, via Schubert’s Death and the Maiden with newer works by Lembit Beecher, Paul Wiancko, and Hannah Kendall. With Syrian clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, the Aizuri Quartet performs Music and Migration, an examination of the players’ personal and family relationships to and experiences with migration, as a physical journey and a state of mind.

Members of the Aizuri Quartet believe in an integrative approach to music making, in which teaching, performing, writing, arranging, curation, and role in the community are all connected. In 2020 the ensemble launched AizuriKids, a free online series of educational videos for children that uses the string quartet as a catalyst for creative learning and features themes such as astronomy, American history, and cooking. These vibrant, whimsical, and interactive videos are lovingly produced by the ensemble and paired with activity sheets to inspire further exploration. 

The Aizuri Quartet is passionate about nurturing the next generation of artists and is deeply grateful to have held several residencies that were instrumental in its development: String Quartet-in-Residence at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, and resident ensemble at the 2014 Ravinia Festival’s Steans Music Institute. 

Formed in 2012 and combining four distinctive musical personalities into a powerful collective, the Aizuri Quartet draws its name from aizuri-e, a style of predominantly blue Japanese woodblock printing that is noted for its vibrancy and incredible detail.