Dior Quartet
Edwards Interfaith Chapel Dior QuartetThe Dior Quartet closes their residency with two Bravo! Vail premieres, including Dinuk Wijerante’s The Disappearance of Lisa Gherardini and Christos Hatzis’s String Quartet No. 2, The Gathering.
Featured Artists
Dior Quartet
Dior Quartet
Joined together from Israel, Korea-Canada, Saint Lucia, and the USA, the Dior String Quartet is the Quartet-in-Residence at the Glenn Gould School, Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.
Silver prize winners of the 2021 Chesapeake Chamber Music Competition and Bronze Medalists of the 2019 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, they formed in fall 2018 at the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University, under the tutelage of Pacifica Quartet. They studied with members of the Alban Berg, St. Lawrence, Danish, Artemis, Ébene, and Belcea quartets.
The Dior Quartet participated in various programs, including the Britten-Pears Young Artists Program, Banff String Quartet: Evolution in collaboration with Tippet Rise Art Center, McGill International String Quartet Academy in Montreal, and the SLSQ Seminar. The Dior Quartet collaborated with Orion Weiss and Victor Yampolsky during their residency at Wintegreen Music Festival, and with Rolston String Quartet, Axel Strauss, and Stéphane Lemelin at the 2021 Prince Edward County Chamber Music Festival.
The quartet made their debut with the Schneider Concert Series in January 2021 and were quarter finalists in the 2021 Bartok World Competition in Budapest.
The repertoire and projects they pursue intersect with their multicultural backgrounds and moral values, as they seek to explore the immigrant experience through art. The quartet takes their name from the French word “d’or” which means gold. It is a rare, elegant, and malleable element, precious to those who own it and often gifted to loved ones. Most importantly, gold holds the memory of the earth and absorbs the stories of the people who give it shape and form.
Program Highlights
- Dior Quartet
Program Notes
The Disappearance of Lisa Gherardini
DINUK WIJERATNE
The Disappearance of Lisa Gherardini
Spoken word, choreography by Dior Quartet
String Quartet No. 2, The Gathering
CHRISTOS HATZIS
String Quartet No. 2, The Gathering
Awakenings
Fleeting Moments
Nadir
Metamorphosis
Artist Insights
Composer Dinuk Wijeratne notes, “This virtuoso musical escapade for string quartet is inspired by the audacious, real-life theft of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa from the Louvre Museum in 1911.” Maybe there is a nod to an old-time Hollywood heist movie, too. How often are we encouraged to laugh in a concert hall?
Hatzis’ second String Quartet is perhaps the furthest we could go from the first piece. Looking at human history filled with violent conflict, the composer asks us to listen to the sounds of ordinary life in the shadow of war. With cinematic, Mediterranean, and minimalist influences, Hatzis creates a work that is truly one of a kind.
—Dior Quartet