Julie Rosenfeld and Deborah Redding, violins

Francesca Martin, viola

Sharon Prater, cello

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The Colorado Quartet was named the winner of the 1983 Naumburg Chamber Music Award. Ten days later they were awarded First Prize in the Banff International String Quartet Competition. They were recognized as one of the finest string quartets on the international scene prior to disbanding in May 2013, quietly ending a 30-year history of tours, recordings and teaching residences.

Highlights of past years included tours of more than twenty countries and performances in major cities across the globe. New York appearances include the Mostly Mozart Festival, where they performed twenty Haydn Quartets over a two-year period, and concerts in Carnegie Hall and at Lincoln Center, in addition they regularly performed the complete Beethoven Quartets. The Colorado Quartet commemorated the 50th anniversary of Bela Bartok's death in 1995 with the first complete performance of the Bartok String Quartets in Philadelphia.

The Colorado Quartet was Quartet-in-Residence at Bard College in New York State, where Quartet members taught private lessons, coached chamber ensembles and presented courses on the Literature of the String Quartet. The ensemble was also Quartet-in-Residence,1998-99 at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. In addition, the Quartet held artist residencies at The New School in Philadelphia, Swarthmore and Skidmore Colleges and Amherst College. They gave master classes across the continent, including at The Eastman School of Music, Northwestern University, The Banff Centre, Indiana University, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and the University of Toronto, and were Artistic Directors of the Soundfest Chamber Music Festival and Quartet in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

The Colorado Quarte's critically acclaimed recordings of Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms and contemporary composers can be found on Parnassus, Mode and Albany Records.

The Colorado Quartet was founded in 1976 at the University of Colorado, and came to New York in 1978 to study at the Juilliard School. They re-formed as an ensemble in 1982, disbanding in May 2013.

As part of their Naumburg prize, the Quartet was a awarded a commission, Ezra Laderman's Seventh Quartet, receiving its world premiere on the Colorado Quartet's Naumburg concert on May 2, 1984 in Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center.

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Naumburg Concert, May 2, 1984, Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center

Colorado Quartet, Julie Rosenfeld and Deborah Redding, violins; Francesca Martin, viola; Sharon Prater, cello

Program

Mozart: Quartet in C Major, K. 465

Ezra Laderman: Seventh Quartet, World premiere, commissioned by the Naumburg Foundation

Beethoven: Quartet in E minor, Op. 59 No. 2

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Fanfare Magazine wrote, "The Colorado Quartet tears into these works with a combined tension, cohesion, grace, and complete understanding of the music ... if it's the music and what the music says that interests you, well this is the only set of the late quartets you'll ever need. ... These four women bring Beethoven to intense, blazing life."

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