OUR STORY

The Quartet

We are four musicians who met at The Juilliard School and, in 2019, decided to start a string quartet.

It sounds simple enough. It wasn't quite that simple.

We were all young musicians finding our way, brought together by a shared fascination with chamber music and a feeling that there was something worth exploring in the quartet repertoire. We began working with members of the Juilliard String Quartet, whose approach became an important part of our musical education: to approach the established as if it were brand new, and the new as if it were firmly established.

Then the world stopped.

Like many young ensembles, we spent 2020 apart. When we reconvened at the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival in the summer of 2021 under the guidance of Joel Krosnick, something had changed. We had missed playing together. We listened differently. And we were ready to see what this quartet could become.

The following year, we won First Prize at the 14th Banff International String Quartet Competition. In 2023, we received an Avery Fisher Career Grant. Since then, the quartet has grown from a group of students into an ensemble performing across North America and Europe, working with artists we admire, recording music we love, and continuing to figure out what it means to play together.

Revise. Rediscover. Reinvigorate.

That is still the idea at the center of what we do.

We love the great quartet repertoire. We also don't think it belongs behind glass. The composers who shaped the tradition, and those continuing to expand it today, are part of a living conversation, and we want to hear what happens when we enter that conversation with fresh ears.

For us, the magic of being a quartet is what happens when four people become one musical entity—when individual personalities and instincts gradually give way to a shared sense of time, sound, and direction. We are constantly responding to one another, exploring, laughing, arguing, and occasionally discovering something that none of us could have found alone. We want the quartet to feel like a playground: a place to experiment, follow an unexpected idea, and discover where the music can go.

We care deeply about the music and the work that goes into it, but we also want the process to feel joyful. Making music with friends should be fun, and we think that sense of enjoyment gives us the freedom to be curious, take risks, and surprise ourselves.

Perhaps appropriately, the name Isidore carries some of that spirit, too. It honors Isidore Cohen, an early member of the Juilliard String Quartet and an important part of our artistic lineage. It also happens to share a name with a legendary Greek monk who, according to a rather apocryphal story, devised an early recipe for vodka. We cannot vouch for the history (but we do like the story).

Ultimately, we hope that sense of friendship, curiosity, and play comes through in the music—and that the audience feels invited to be part of it.