The Dover Quartet, the Northwestern University Bienen School of Music’s Quartet-in-Residence, has received a $25,000 Avery Fisher Career Grant.

Awarded by the Avery Fisher Artist Program, the prestigious grant provides professional assistance and recognition to talented instrumentalists who have great potential for major careers.

Other Avery Fisher Career Grant winners for 2017 include violinists Stephen Waarts and Chad Hoopes and pianist Haochen Zhang.

Established in 1974, the Avery Fisher Artist Program has been recognized as one of the most prestigious in the music world. The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts administers the program, which includes the Avery Fisher Career Grants as well as the Avery Fisher Prize.

Since claiming the grand prize and all three special prizes at the 2013 Banff International String Quartet Competition, the Dover Quartet has catapulted to international stardom. The group’s 2015-16 schedule, boasting 120 performances, included the first year of its three-year residency at the Bienen School of Music, as well as their Carnegie Hall debut, their first tour of Israel and collaborations with Anthony McGill, David Shifrin, Anne-Marie McDermott, Avi Avital and Edgar Meyer. This season has included the release of the group’s debut recording, a US tour with bassist-composer Edgar Meyer, and performances of the complete Beethoven quartet cycles over the course of six concerts in three cities. 

The quartet is comprised of violinists Joel Link and Bryan Lee, violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, and cellist Camden Shaw.

The Dover Quartet closes year two of its three-year Bienen School residency with a performance Tuesday, May 23, 2017, at 7:30 p.m. in Mary B. Galvin Recital Hall, 70 Arts Circle Drive, featuring three of Beethoven’s landmark string quartets: No. 4 in C Minor, No. 16 in F Major, and No. 8 in E Minor (“Razumovsky”).

Tickets are $30 for the general public and $10 for students with a valid ID. Tickets are available on the Concerts@Bienen website, by phone at 847-467-4000 or by visiting the Pick-Staiger box office at 50 Arts Circle Drive on the Evanston campus. Winter Chamber Music Festival subscribers receive a 20% discount.

The Dover Quartet’s residency at the Bienen School is supported by a generous grant from the Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation.

Photo by Carlin Ma