Tesla Quartet coming to University of Missouri for residency, concert on Sunday, November 3

The internationally acclaimed Tesla Quartet is coming to the University of Missouri for a Mizzou New Music Initiative residency that will include a concert at 4:00 p.m. Sunday, November 3 at Whitmore Recital Hall on campus. Admission to the concert is free and open to the public.

The group’s visit to Columbia comes as they’ve just released their second album, “Joy & Desolation,” on the Orchid Classics label. A collaboration with clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein, the disc features a recording of “Ius in Bello” by Mizzou assistant professor of composition Carolina Heredia, as well as works by Mozart, Finzi, and John Corigliano.

Their concert at Whitmore Recital Hall will include a performance of “Ius in Bello,” plus compositions by Michael Ippolito, Grażyna Bacewicz, and Giovanni Sollima.

In addition to their public performance, while in residence at Mizzou the members of Tesla Quartet also will do a reading session of string quartets written by student composers; give lessons and master classes to student string players; and make a recording of another of Heredia’s works, “Ausencias.”

Former in 2008 at The Juilliard School, the Tesla Quartet (pictured) is Ross Snyder (violin), Michelle Lie (violin), Edwin Kaplan (viola), and Serafim Smigelskiy (cello). They perform regularly across North America and Europe, with recent highlights including their debut at New York’s Lincoln Center, a return to London’s Wigmore Hall, and performances at Stanford University’s Bing Concert Hall, plus tours of Brazil, China, and South Korea, and a residency in the UK.

Praised by The International Review of Music for their “superb capacity to find the inner heart of everything they play, regardless of era, style or technical demand,” the Tesla Quartet has won top prizes in numerous international competitions, most recently taking second prize plus the Haydn Prize and Canadian Commission Prize at the 12th Banff International String Quartet Competition.

Their debut album, released in 2018 on Orchid Classics, featured works by Haydn, Ravel and Stravinsky and won wide critical acclaim, including a double 5-star rating from BBC Music Magazine and praise from Gramophone magazine for its “tautness of focus and refinement of detail.”