The Telegraph Quartet was formed in 2013 with an equal passion for the standard chamber repertoire and for 20th and 21st Century chamber music. Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “an incredibly valuable addition to the cultural landscape” and “powerfully adept…with a combination of brilliance and subtlety,” the Telegraph was awarded the prestigious 2016 Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award as well as the Grand Prize at the 2014 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. The quartet has gone on to perform in concert halls, music festivals and academic institutions from Los Angeles and New York to Italy and Taiwan, including Carnegie Hall, San Francisco’s Herbst Recital Hall and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Chamber Masters Series, and at festivals including the Chautauqua Institute, Kneisel Hall, and Emilia Romagna Festival in Italy. In 2016, the Quartet was one of a handful of emerging professional string quartets invited from around the world to the Biennale de quatuors à cordes to showcase at the Philharmonie de Paris for major concert presenters of Europe and Asia. The Quartet is currently on faculty at San Francisco Conservatory of Music as their Quartet-in-Residence for a three-year residency.
The quartet’s notable musical collaborators have included cellist Norman Fischer, pianist Simone Dinnerstein, violinist Ian Swensen and Germany’s Henschel Quartett. A fervent champion of contemporary and 20th Century repertoire, Telegraph has co-commissioned John Harbison’s String Quartet No. 6, and given its West Coast premiere in the fall of 2017 on San Francisco State University’s Morrison Artists Series. The quartet will release its debut album in 2018, featuring works by Anton Webern, Benjamin Britten and Leon Kirchner.
Beyond the concert stage, the Telegraph Quartet seeks to spread its music through education and audience engagement. In the fall of 2017, the quartet traveled to schools and communities in Mid-Coast Maine with Yellow Barn’s Music Haul, a mobile performance stage that brings music outside the concert hall to communities across the United States. The quartet has given master classes at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Collegiate and Pre-College Divisions, through the Morrison Artist Series at San Francisco State University and abroad at the Taipei National University of the Arts and National Taiwan Normal University.
While the Telegraph Quartet is indebted to numerous mentors and teachers, our primary musical guidance and support has come from Mark Sokol, Bonnie Hampton and Ian Swensen of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. The Telegraph Quartet is based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
