the Chiara String Quartet

“the Chiara -- was exemplary in all three pieces. The chiseled ensemble work brought out the astonishing craft and thrilling expressive range in Webern's writing (where the players' whisper-soft phrasing was truly breathtaking), and the vigor of the more extroverted playing proved a perfect fit with the first two movements of the Prokofiev and the outer movements of the Debussy.”

– The Washington Post

“Some artists just focus on the music they love and settle for earning points in heaven. And the Chiara String Quartet will earn many with Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout, by Peruvian American composer Gabriela Lena Frank (New Voice Singles). What a piece! Incredibly vivid ethnic imagery is contained in six tight, short movements”

– David Patrick Stearns INQUIRER MUSIC CRITIC
The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Indeed while their sexy reading of Frank's "An Andalusian Walkabout" glimmered, shook, and dolefully sang as needed, it was the biting Bartk and languorous, soulful Brahms that stole the show.”

– Daniel Felsenfeld, Strings Magazine

“When the musicians put bows to strings, they delivered a nuanced performance that suggested that Webern's 1909 score accommodates, and perhaps demands, conflicting points of view. They embraced the late Romanticism from which the music is mined, playing parts of the first movement with a lush, pulsing vibrato that made its turn-of-the-century Viennese origins unmistakable, and bathing the finale in an emotional, warm glow.New York Time”

– New York Times

“superb young American group”

– The New Yorker

“This outstanding group of young musicians made its debut last month at Meany Hall with a second performance at the Tractor Tavern in Ballard the following night. The program was eclectic, ranging all over the map, and the music-making of a high order.”

– R.M. CAMPBELL, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“The music [Robert Sirota's Triptych] is powerful and evokes the emotions of 9/11 . . . and the Chiara Quartet plays [it] with feeling and virtuosity.”

– American Record Guide, David Moore

“The presentation catered to the expectations of a pop-music audience; individual movements were offered piecemeal, the exception being the whole of Shostakovichs devastating Eighth String Quartet, played here with endearing intensity. Condescension was not on the program, which mixed and matched hard-driving pieces by Jefferson Friedman and Pierre Jalbert with Mozart, Haydn, Brahms and lighthearted Latin American music by Gabriela Lena Frank.”

– Bernard Holland, New York Times

“The Chiara's no-holds-barred approach was most effective in Jefferson Friedman's Quartet No. 3 (a world premiere). The players sustained this cinematically atmospheric score with masterly conviction, organizing the loose strands into a convincing dramatic whole and realizing a host of unusual sounds and textures with both gusto and finesse.”

– The Strad, Andrew Farach-Colton

“superb quartet....”

– Allan Kozinn, New York Times

“the Chiara String Quartet never, figuratively speaking, broke a sweat. You don't realize how accustomed you are to hearing symptoms of labor in a string quartet until they're not there. And with the Chiara quartet, they are not. It was almost eerie.”

– The Philadelphia Inquirer, David Patrick Stearns

“...this tightly knit ensemble brings single movements of quartets from Beethoven onwards. If they play anything from Gabriela Lena Frank's exciting South American folk music-inspired Leyendas, which they premiered and recorded, there should be dancing.”

– Marc Geelhoed, Timeout Chicago