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Ives Quartet

The Mill Valley Chamber Music Society is delighted to present the Ives Quartet. The Ives Quartet has established a reputation for passion, precision, and provocative programming, winning accolades for playing that shows both super-refinement and visceral, rock-and-roll intensity. "Whether the group was playing Beethoven, Dvorak or Quincy Porter, the twentieth-century composer whose works are becoming an Ives specialty, the music felt thoroughly absorbed, idiomatic, and performed from the inside-out." —San Jose Mercury News. Inspired by the passionate artistic commitment and unique temperament of American composer Charles Ives (1874-1954), the quartet has attracted critical enthusiasm for its "practice of reveling in the unfamiliar," championing a repertoire that combines established masterworks with underappreciated gems, neglected scores of early twentieth-century America, and specially commissioned new pieces. Bettina Mussumeli, violin, was educated at Juilliard, studying with Dorothy Delay and Ivan Galamian among others. Members of the Cleveland, Guarneri and Juilliard quartets were her coaches in chamber music. Upon graduating she took a position as co-director of I Solisti Veneti, remaining with that ensemble for eighteen years. The viola player, Jodi Levitz, also played with I Solisti Veneti for many years after graduation from Juilliard and now teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Susan Freier, violin, pursued degrees in both music and biology at Stanford University before firmly coming down on the side of music. Stephen Harrison, violoncello, is on the faculty of Stanford University. He received his musical education at Oberlin College. The Quartet presents an annual home concert series in Silicon Valley and the Greater San Francisco Bay Area in addition to performing nationally and internationally at noted chamber music series and festivals. They are currently recording all nine quartets of the American composer, Quincy Porter, 1897-1966. www.ivesquartet.org