Pacifica Quartet

The Pacifica Quartet is a professional string quartet based in Bloomington, Indiana. Its members are: Simin Ganatra, first violin; Sibbi Bernhardsson, second violin; Masumi Per Rostad, viola; and Brandon Vamos, cello. Formed in 1994, the group has won prizes in competitions such as the 1996 Coleman Chamber Music Competition, the 1997 Concert Artists Guild Competition, and the 1998 Naumburg Chamber Music Competition. It also received Chamber Music America’s prestigious Cleveland Quartet Award in 2002, the Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2006, and was named "Ensemble of the Year" by Musical America in 2009.

The Pacifica Quartet tours throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. The ensemble is known for its traversal of the complete string cycles of a single composer, and in recent years have toured and recorded the quartets of Elliott Carter, Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Shostakovich.

Currently the ensemble serves as Quartet-in-Residence and full-time faculty at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University in Bloomington. The members of the Pacifica Quartet are also Resident Performing Artists at the University of Chicago and were previously the Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Illinois School of Music from 2003-2012.

The Pacifica Quartet was formed in 1994 in southern California. Simin Ganatra and Sibbi Bernhardsson were both students of well-known pedagogues Roland and Almita Vamos, whose son is cellist Brandon Vamos. Sibbi moved from Iceland to the Chicago area to study with the Vamoses. Two members of the Pacifica Quartet – Ganatra and Vamos - graduated from the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio. The quartet’s original personnel included Ganatra, Vamos, and violist Kathryn Lockwood. In 1997, Sibbi Bernhardsson collaborated with violist Masumi Per Rostad at Yale School of Music’s Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. Rostad was subsequently invited to join the Pacifica Quartet a few years later, shortly after Lockwood’s departure in 2001. The Quartet’s personnel has not changed since.

...
Wikipedia