Chiara String Quartet

The Chiara String Quartet is an internationally performing professional string quartet based in Lincoln, Nebraska. The Group is the Quartet-in-residence at the School of Music in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and is also the Blodgett Artists-in-Residence at Harvard University. The group is also in residence as faculty at the Greenwood Music Camp, a summer program for advanced high school musicians. The group's members are Rebecca Fischer and Hye Yung Julie Yoon, violins; Jonah Sirota, viola; and Gregory Beaver, cello.

In addition to traditional concertizing, in December 2006 the group began performing in bars and other unusual performance venues for a classical string quartet under the tagline "Chamber music in any chamber." This has brought them into bars such as The Brick in Kansas City, MO, Rose in Brooklyn, NY (New York Times review), Avogadro's Number in Fort Collins, CO, and Avantgarden in Houston, TX.

In this and the following season, the quartet will be performing all 16 of Ludwig van Beethoven's string quartets at Harvard University, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Music at Deerfield in Northampton, MA.

The quartet's professional career started in 2000 with a Chamber Music America Rural Residency grant, placing the group in Grand Forks, North Dakota, where they lived until 2002. The group won the Senior String Gold Medal in the 2002 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, and was a winner of the 2002 Astral Artistic Services National Auditions, and was selected as the Lisa Arnholdt graduate string quartet at the Juilliard School from 2003-2005. The quartet also won third prize in the 2005 Premio Paolo Borciani.

In addition to the CMA Rural residency grant that began their career, the group has been the recipient of a Commissioning grant and 3 Residency partnership grants from Chamber Music America, and a Meet the Composer grant.

The Chiara Quartet's recording of the Brahms and Mozart Clarinet Quintets was a Hot Pick of October 2006 for NET Radio. The Chiara Quartet's performance at Meany Hall in December 2007 was selected as one of the highlights of the year by Seattle Post-Intelligencer's R.M. Campbell.

From its beginning as a professional ensemble, the Chiara Quartet has actively commissioned new works for string quartet. Composer Jefferson Friedman wrote his 2nd quartet for the group in 1999 when they were still students, and his 3rd quartet for them in 2005. Gabriela Lena Frank composed her Leyendas, an Andean Walkabout for String Quartet for the group in 2001, and her Ghosts in the Dream Machine piano quintet for the Chiara Quartet plus pianists Simone Dinnerstein in 2005. Robert Sirota wrote his Triptych, a commemoration of the victims of 9/11 for the quartet in 2002.

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