The Juilliard String Quartet will appear at ETSU on Thursday, March 25, at 8 p.m. in the D.P. Culp University Center’s Martha Street Culp Auditorium. The concert is sponsored by ETSU’s Mary B. Martin School of the Arts and the Department of Music.The Juilliard String Quartet (JSQ) is the quartet-in-residence at the Juilliard School in New York City. Founded in 1946, the group has performed a cumulative repertoire of some 500 works, ranging from the great classical composers to masters of the current century. The JSQ is internationally known for “its clarity of structure and for their ability to consistently achieve a purity of sound and variety of tone color.”

“They perform invigorating and lively interpretations of a wide repertoire,” said Anita DeAngelis, director of ETSU’s Mary B. Martin School of the Arts and associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “With decades of experience appearing in well-known concert halls around the world, the quartet connects with a wide variety of audiences. The warmth and generosity of the musicians as individuals bring a magnetic quality to their music making.”

DeAngelis says the JSQ is rather unique in that all of its members are educators as well as performers. First violinist Nick Eanet is the newest member of the group, succeeding Joel Smirnoff in 2009. According to Juilliard’s president Joseph Polisi, Eanet is a musician of “great artistry and intellectual curiosity.”

A violinist since age 3, Eanet has performed extensively with the Mendelssohn String Quartet and has appeared at numerous summer festivals, including the Mostly Mozart Festival, Sante Fe Chamber Music Festival, Aspen Music Festival, Maui Chamber Music Festival, and the Steamboat Springs Strings in the Mountains Festival, among others.

From 1999 until joining the Juilliard String Quartet, Eanet was the concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, appointed by James Levine. During his tenure with the orchestra, he performed across Europe and Japan, and he regularly appeared in orchestral and chamber music concerts at all three venues at Carnegie Hall.

Second violinist Ronald Copes is a prolific recording artist with numerous works on Sony Classical, Orion, CRI, Klavier, New World Records, ECM and the Musical Heritage Society. His interest in contemporary compositions has allowed him to work extensively with composers, and he has premiered a number of new works for strings. He has garnered prizes in several national and international competitions, including the Artists’ Advisory Council, the Merriweather Post, and the Concours International d’Execution Musicale in Geneva. He is a faculty member at the Juilliard School as well as the artist-faculty with the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival during the summer.

Samuel Rhodes, violist, has taught and performed all over the world and is celebrating his 41st year as a member of both the Juilliard String Quartet and the faculty of The Juilliard School, where he chairs the viola department. In 1998, Rhodes had the honor of being invited to join the late Isaac Stern as a coach at his Chamber Music Workshops in Jerusalem (Israel), Miyazaki (Japan), and Carnegie Hall in New York City.

Joel Krosnick, cellist, is chair of the cello department at the Juilliard School, and he has been associated with the Aspen, Marlboro, and Tanglewood music festivals, among others. Krosnick holds honorary doctoral degrees from Michigan State University, Jacksonville University, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

The evening’s program will include works by Mendelssohn, Schumann, and contemporary composer Mario Davidovsky. Admission to the concert is $25 for lower level seating and $15 for balcony.

For tickets, or to request special accommodations, contact the ETSU Department of Music at 423-439-4276. Additional information is available at http://www.etsu.edu/cas/arts/.

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