The Missouri Clarinet Quartet will make their Mizzou International Composers Festival debut as a part of the “Mizzou New Music” concert on Friday, July 27 at the Missouri Theatre.

Founded in 2017 under the guidance of assistant teaching professor Wesley Warnhoff,  the MCQ is committed “to community engagement and the expansion of the clarinet quartet repertoire.”

The members of the quartet include Victoria Hargrove, a Mizzou alum now entering the DMA program at Michigan State University; music educator and Mizzou alum Erin Rhomberg; Andrew Mahonen, a Mizzou graduate student and teaching assistant; and Austin Wright, a graduate student and the new clarinetist for the Mizzou New Music Ensemble. (For their performances this summer, Warnhoff has substituted for Rhomberg.)

The MCQ has performed outreach concerts and clarinet workshops at venues throughout Missouri, and earlier this month made their European debut with a performance at the International Clarinet Association’s ClarinetFEST 2018 in Ostend, Belgium.

Their ClarinetFEST concert featured two new works commissioned by the MCQ in 2018 from Mizzou composers, which also will be performed at the MICF. The commissions for Stefan Freund, professor of composition and artistic director of MNMI and MICF, and for student composer and clarinetist Aaron Mencher, were funded by MNMI with support for Dr. Jeanne and Rex Sinquefield and the Sinquefield Charitable Foundation.

You can hear a recording of the MCQ playing Mencher’s commission work “Checkerboard” via the embedded player below.