Audubon Quartet

Renowned for their "strikingly beautiful, luminescent" sound (The New York Times), the Audubon Quartet has won acclaim throughout the world for nearly 30 years. Founded in 1974, the ensemble quickly achieved international recognition by winning top prizes in three major competitions in their first four years together: The International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France (1977); The String Quartet Competition at the Festival Villa Lobos in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (1977); and in 1979, The International String Quartet Competition in Portsmouth, England. They were the first American string quartet ever to win a first prize in international string quartet competition.

The Quartet performs in the major concert halls throughout North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, and the Caribbean. In 1981, the Quartet made a groundbreaking three-week tour of Mainland China at the invitation of the Chinese Ministry of Culture, the first American quartet ever to visit the People's Republic of China.

Other special appearances include a performance at the White House for President Carter in honor of the Evian Competition prize, and an inauguration performance for Pennsylvania's Governor Richard Thornburgh. In addition, the Audubon Quartet has performed regularly on the BBC in London and made numerous other radio and television appearances, including NPR Performance Today and CBS Sunday Morning. The Audubon Quartet has enjoyed a 20-year summer association with the Chautauqua Institution (NY) and an even longer association of 30 years with the Music at Gretna (PA) Festival. They have also appeared as guests in numerous other national and international summer music festivals.

In addition to performing most of the classic chamber music repertoire, the Quartet has regularly premiered and programmed new works by a culturally diverse community of contemporary composers. To date, the Audubon Quartet has given 23 world premieres.

The Audubon Quartet came into existence at the 1974 session of the Lenox Quartet Chamber Music Seminar held in Binghamton, New York. Since that time, the Quartet has been invited to teach at seminars of leading music schools and universities around the world.

The Audubon Quartet is the quartet in residence at Shenandoah Conservatory in Winchester, VA.

"They listen to one another and adjust instinctively to produce a sound of strikingly beautiful, luminescent quality that invariably serves the music with grace, sophistication and vibrancy."
-The New York Times

"The Prize winning Audubon Quartet ...displayed glowing musicality Sunday night at the National Gallery of Art."
- Washington Post

"The Audubon members played American Dreams like inspired demons, with splendid technical command, a big, vibrant ensemble tone and an infectious sense of pleasure."
- Los Angeles Times

"Playing with lightness and bounce, they produced a transparent timbre that allowed all voices to be heard with clarity...the players' close agreement on matters of phrasing, articulation and dynamics gave their interpretation splendid unity."
- Cleveland Plain Dealer

"The players have strong backgrounds, the best training and credentials, and they complement each other wonderfully. While each is a personality, his tone connects or meets the tone of the others, a conscious achievement, I'm sure."
- San Fransisco Chronicle

"The Audubon played up, and then some, to the standards of its previous performance here, lavishing tone and rhetoric on the Mendelssohn and on Webern's early opus in late-romantic style. The most austere but no less heartfelt Shostakovich was brilliantly detailed and warmly phrased."
- Richmond Times Dispatch

Discography
Only recording currently known to be in print are listed.

• Music of Jerome Kern (Centaur CRC-2724)
• Piano Quartets of Ernest von Dohnanyi (Centaur CRC 2503)
• String Quartets of Peter Schickele (Centaur CRC 2505)
• Chamber Music of Donald Erb (CRI CD 857)
• String Quartets of Antonin Dvorak (Centaur CRC 2416)
• String Quartets of Zoltan Kodaly (Centaur CRC 2372)
• Through the Prism of the Black Experience by David Baker (Liscio LAS-11972)
• String Quartets of Ernst von Dohnanyi (Centaur CRC 2309)
• Music for Oboe and Strings by Bax, Bliss and Britten (Telarc CD-80205)
• String Quartets of Peter Schickele and Ezra Laderman (RCA Victor 7719-2-RC)
• Flute Quartets of Joseph Haydn (Price-less Recordings D 1077X)
• The Ugly Duckling by John Deak (Opus One No. 77)
• String Quartet in Two Movements by Brian Fennelly (New World 80448-2)
• String Quartet No. 2 by Leo Kraft (Capstone Records CPS-8649)

Individual Biographies

Akemi Takayama, violin
Ms. Takayama is currently in her ninth year as violinist for the Audubon Quartet. Born to musical parents in Tokyo, Japan, Takayama began her violin studies with her mother at the age of three. Her professional violin career began in Japan at the age of 15. She has performed throughout Japan, France, and the U.S., including appearances with the Shinsei-Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Toho School of Music Orchestra, and on a "FM Recital" broadcast throughout Japan on NHK Radio.

Since 2004, Ms. Takayama appears regularly as both soloist and concertmaster with the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra, performs with musicians from the RSO and other professional chamber ensembles, and is active as an educator and arts advocate throughout Southwest Virginia. Akemi's recent solo performances with the RSO include Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons", Beethoven's Violin Concerto, and Brahms' Double Concerto.

Akemi Takayama received first prize in both the Northwest Regional Music Teacher National Association and the Grand Junction Young Artist competitions. She has performed at and served on the faculties of the Chautauqua Institute in New York, the Idyllwild School of the Arts in California, the Brevard Music Center in North Carolina, Shenandoah Performs in Virginia, and at Virginia Tech. During her graduate studies, Akemi was a teaching assistant to the renowned Donald Weilerstein at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she earned both an Artist Diploma and a Master of Music degree.

Previously, she studied with Toshiya Eto and Ryosaku Kubota at the renowned Toho School of Music in Tokyo, where she earned her bachelor's degree in music performance. She also studied with Brian Hanly at the University of Wyoming where she earned her professional studies degree. Ms. Takayama won a position in the prestigious Marlboro Music Festival and the Isaac Stern Music Workshop. The late Isaac Stern said of Ms. Takayama "she is a true musician and will always bring credit to any group that she works with."

Her recordings with the Audubon Quartet include four CDs, all available on the Centaur and Composers Recordings labels. She plays a J.B. Ceruti violin made in Cremona, Italy, made in 1805.

Ellen Jewett, violin
Ellen Jewett has performed in Europe, Japan, Africa and New Zealand and throughout the United States in major venues such as Carnegie Hall, Weill Recital Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall, the Kennedy Center, both as recitalist and with groups such as the American Chamber Players, the New York Chamber Soloists, New York Chamber Ensemble, Continuum, and the Apple Hill Chamber Players.

Currently she is a member of the Audubon Quartet with whom she has been performing since 2000. She is also a founding member of the contemporary music ensemble Ensemble X as well as the Taliesin Trio with whom she has been in residence at the Tanglewood Institute and the Spoleto Festival in Italy.

Chamber music collaborations include performances with Yo Yo Ma, James Buswell, Eugenia Zuckerman, Anthony Newman and Colin Carr. An avid performer of contemporary music , she has performed many premiers and worked with such composers as Phillip Glass, Shulamit Ran, John Harbison, Leon Kirchner and Steven Stucky.

She has recorded for Centaur, Chandos, Albany and Newport Classics.

She has served on the string faculties of McGill University, SUNY Stony Brook, Ithaca College, the Chautauqua Institute, and the Meadowmont School of Music.

Currently she divides her time between the US and Istanbul where she is a professor at the Istanbul University State Conservatory and is co-concertmaster of the Borusan Philharmonic.

She received her Bachelor degree from Indiana University and her Master's from SUNY Stony Brook. Her major teachers have been Joyce Robbins, James Buswell and Josef Gingold.

Doris Lederer, viola
A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, Doris Lederer has performed with the Marlboro Music Festival and toured with Music From Marlboro. She has appeared as soloist with the Seattle Symphony, the Czech Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, the Chicago Sinfonietta, and the Albuquerque Chamber Orchestra, among others.

Ms. Lederer has been honored to represent the United States as a jury member at the Eighth Banff International String Quartet Competition in Canada and to be a jury member of the Coleman Chamber Music Competition in California.

Currently an associate professor of viola and chamber music at Shenandoah Conservatory in Winchester, VA, Ms. Lederer also serves on the faculties of the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival in Blue Hill, Maine, the Idyllwild Arts Summer Program in Idyllwild, California, and the Chautauqua Institution in New York. She has also served on the faculties of The International Festival at Round Top, Texas and The Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, as well as the annual Audubon Quartet's Intensive String Quartet Seminars. She has given viola and chamber music Master Classes at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Oberlin Conservatory, Indiana University, the Yale School of Music, the Eastman School of Music, the Kansas City Conservatory of Music, Kneisel Hall, the Chautauqua Institute, Idyllwild Arts, the Marrowstone Music Festival in Washington State and the Beijing and Shanghai Conservatories in China.

As a member of the Audubon Quartet since 1976, Ms. Lederer has performed extensively throughout the world and has recorded extensively on the RCA, Telarc, Centaur and Opus One labels.

Ms. Lederer's four solo CD albums, entitled An English Fantasy for Viola and Harp, Music of Arnold Bax and York Bowen, The Passion of Bliss, Bowen and Bridge and Music by York Bowen, which features the Bowen Viola Concerto have been released by Centaur Records.

Born in Istanbul to European parents, Ms. Lederer grew up in Seattle, Washington, where she began her study of the viola at age nine with Vilem Sokol. She studied with Georges Janzer at Indiana University and subsequently attended the Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied with Michael Tree, Karen Tuttle, Felix Galimir and Mischa Schneider.

Clyde Thomas Shaw, cello
Founding member of the Audubon Quartet, Clyde Shaw attended the Oberlin Conservatory, going on to earn a Bachelor of Music degree from Stetson University and a Master of Music degree at the State University of New York in Binghamton.

He studied cello with Aldo Parisot and Richard Kapuscinski, and chamber music with Felix Galimir, Michael Tree, Arnold Steinhardt, Sidney Griller, Robert Mann, Eugene Lener, Zoltan Sekeley, and members of the Lenox Quartet.

Born in Orlando, Florida, Mr. Shaw served as assistant principal cellist with the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra and was cellist of the Faculty Consort at Stetson University before forming the Audubon Quartet in 1974.

During the past 3 decades, Mr. Shaw has appeared worldwide as the cellist of the Audubon Quartet and has recorded for the RCA, Telarc, Centaur, CRI and Opus One recording companies.

His appearances include featured performances on CBS Sunday Morning, Recitals at Alice Tully, Avery Fischer, Carnegie and Town Halls in New York, Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, Curtis Hall in Philadelphia, Symphony Hall in Chicago, Wilshire Ebel Theater in Los Angeles, Wigmore Hall in London, Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome, Red Tower Theater in Beijing, Bavarian Radio in Munich, Swiss TV in Geneva, Tel Aviv Museum in Israel, several tours abroad for the United States Department of State, and performance at the White House.

In addition to Mr. Shaw’s duties with the Audubon Quartet, he is a professor of cello and chamber music at Shenandoah Conservatory in Winchester, Virginia.

Visit their website at http://www.audubon4tet.com

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