Pacifica String Quartet

With a career spanning three decades, the multiple GRAMMY® Award-winning Pacifica Quartet has achieved international recognition as one of the finest chamber ensembles performing today. Known for delivering performances that are “engrossing, characterful…with a luminescent tranquility [and] spine-tingling intensity” (The New York Times), the Quartet is celebrated for its virtuosity, exuberant performance style, and fearless repertory choices. Its sound, distinguished by “warmth of phrasing, dynamic control and superbly coordinated ensemble balance” (Gramophone Magazine), has solidified the ensemble as one of the most essential voices in American chamber music. 

The Pacifica Quartet appears this season across North America and abroad, including a world premiere tour of their newest program, American Portraits, with Oscar-nominated film icon Sigourney Weaver at the 92nd Street Y in New York; Washington Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.; and Wigmore Hall in London. American Portraits is centered on two world-premiere commissions for narrator and string quartet honoring visionaries who helped shape our nation – champion of justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is celebrated by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Jennifer Higdon, and environmental trailblazer Rachel Carson by GRAMMY® nominee Gabriela Lena Frank.

An ardent advocate for living composers, the Pacifica Quartet has commissioned and premiered works by Keeril Makan, Julia Wolfe, and Shulamit Ran. Ran’s Glitter, Doom, Shards, Memory – commissioned in partnership with the Music Accord consortium, Wigmore Hall, and Tokyo’s Suntory Hall – received its New York premiere with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. The Pacifica Quartet has proven itself to be the preeminent interpreter of string quartet cycles, harnessing the group’s singular focus and incredible stamina to portray each composer’s evolution, often over the course of just a few days.

Based in Bloomington, Indiana, the Pacifica Quartet has served as full-time faculty and Quartet-in-Residence at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music since 2012.