Afiara String Quartet will be the third presentation in the 2009-2010 Saint Vincent College Concert Series at 8 p.m. Saturday, November 7 in the Robert S. Carey Student Center Performing Arts Center. The group features Valerie Li, violin; Yuri Cho, violin; David Samuel, viola; and Adrian Fung, cello, in a program of classical music by Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn.

Admission is $15 and tickets will be available at the door or by calling 724 805-2565. Single tickets, season tickets, flex passes, group rates and student discounts are available. A dinner concert package, A Classic Evening at Saint Vincent, is also offered.

The program includes String Quartet in C Major, K. 465, Dissonance by W.A. Mozart, String Quartet in F Major, Op. 18, No. 1 by Ludwig Beethoven, and String Quartet No. 2 in A minor. Op. 13 by Felix Mendelssohn.

Winner of the 2008 Concert Artists Guild International Competition, the Afiara String Quartet has been praised as “a terrifically unified, versatile, and moving ensemble” with “startling intensity” and a “powerful, keen-edged collective sound” (San Francisco Classical Voice). This all-Canadian group was named The Juilliard School’s new graduate resident string quartet beginning in 2009-10, including studies with and assistant duties to The Juilliard String Quartet and a Lincoln Center recital in May 2010. Complimented for its “energy, style and pizzazz” by David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet, the Afiara appeared at Carnegie Hall on the Kronos: Signature Works series and Chamber Music America’s National Conference tribute to the Kronos.

In addition to its win at the 2008 CAG Competition, the Quartet claimed a top prize at the prestigious Munich ARD International Music Competition in the same year. From 2007-2009, the Quartet was the Morrison Fellowship quartet-in-residence at San Francisco State University's International Center for the Arts (ICA), where the members were teaching assistants to their mentor ensemble, the Alexander String Quartet. One of two fellowship quartets at the 2008 Aspen Festival's Center for Advanced Quartet Studies, the Afiara Quartet also serves as artist-in-residence at Lake Tahoe Music Festival's Education and Outreach Program and is an affiliate of San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music. The ensemble has been heard on Bavarian Radio, CBC Radio 2, KALW, and was featured in the Road to Banff documentary profiling its participation in the 2007 Banff International String Quartet Competition.

Season highlights for 2009-10 include the Quartet’s debut at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall on the CAG Winners series, as well as concerts at the Library of Congress, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, Schneider Concerts at the New School, Purdue University Convocations Series, Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, Saint Vincent College and in California at Montalvo Arts Center and Morrison Artist Series. In Canada, the ensemble performs at the Mooredale Concert Series and at Festival of the Sound, and enjoys return engagements with the Montreal and Ottawa International Chamber Music Festivals. The Afiara Quartet also begins a new Visiting Quartet Residency of concerts and teaching with the Glenn Gould School at Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music.

In 2008-2009, the Afiara Quartet performed for the San Jose Chamber Music Society, Sierra Chamber Society Chamber Music in Occidental, Old First Church Concerts and in Canada with the Calgary ProMusica Series and the Montreal International Chamber Music Festival. The Quartet also appears on San Francisco Performances at Herbst Theatre (Mendelssohn Octet with the Alexander String Quartet), with pianist Stephen Prutsman in San Jose and at Nevada City's Music in the Mountains, as well as with Bonnie Hampton at the Starcross Festival (Schubert Cello Quintet). Under the auspices of the ICA, the Afiara Quartet released its debut CD on the Foghorn Classics label in fall 2009, featuring quartets by Mendelssohn and Schubert, and the Mendelssohn Octet with the Alexander Quartet.

To date, the Afiara String Quartet has given the world premieres of Brett Abigana's Une Grande Messe and Jason Bush's Visions in San Francisco (the latter of which was written for the Afiara), and the East Coast premiere of Peteris Vasks' String Quartet in New York. Together with timpanist Louis Siu, they commissioned and premiered chamber music repertoire for string quartet and tenor timpani. The ensemble also gave the world premiere of Huck Hodge's String Quartet No. 2 in New York with the support of the American Composers Forum and the Jerome Foundation.

In addition to their studies with the Alexander String Quartet, the Afiara players have worked with numerous musicians including the American, Cavani, Emerson, Kronos, Takacs and Ying Quartets, Earl Carlyss, James Dunham, Henk Guittart, Bonnie Hampton, Geoff Nuttall, Barry Shiffman and Scott St. John, and at the San Francisco Conservatory with Paul Hersh, Mark Sokol and Ian Swensen. They also collaborate and perform with the rap group Blunt Delphix.

Formed in 2006, the Afiara String Quartet takes its name from the Spanish fiar, meaning “to trust,” a basic element vital to the depth and joy of its music-making. The ensemble is committed to education, connecting with diverse audiences and sharing music with those less fortunate. The Quartet has served as faculty at Chamber Music of the Rockies and Canada's Southern Ontario Chamber Music Institute. Bringing urban elements into its outreach activities, the ensemble bridges the gap between Haydn and hip-hop.

Violinist Valerie Li received her bachelor's degree from the Peabody Conservatory and her master's degree from the New England Conservatory. She has performed at the Kennedy Center and Carnegie, Jordan and Strathmore Halls. Ms. Li won First Prize in Chamber Music at the National Music Festival of Canada and was the recipient of a British Columbia Arts Council Award to study at Peabody, where she won the Marbury Prize and the Hulsteyn Award. Ms. Li has been named a fellow at Tanglewood Music Center and Aspen Music Festival, and has performed at Taos School of Music in New Mexico and the Banff Centre for the Performing Arts. She has played with the Baltimore and Singapore Symphonies and served as Concertmaster of the New England Conservatory Philharmonia, the Peabody Symphony Orchestra and the National Youth Orchestra of Canada. Ms. Li studied violin with Miriam Fried, Herbert Greenberg and Gwen Thompson and chamber music with members of the Takacs, Juilliard, Vermeer and Borromeo String Quartets.

Violinist Yuri Cho received her Bachelor's and Master's degrees from The Juilliard School, where she studied with Dorothy DeLay, Naoko Tanaka and Masao Kawasaki as a recipient of the Dorothy Starling Violin Scholarship and the Jean Doyle Loomis Award. She was a featured soloist with the Seoul Royal Symphony in Korea and Japan, the Concordia Symphony Orchestra in Canada, and she has given concerts in Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall in New York, and in Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Ms. Cho has performed with Norman Fischer, Jean-Michel Fonteneau, Paul Hersh, Jodi Levitz and Ian Swensen. She was named an Osher Scholar at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Ian Swensen. Ms. Cho is currently a faculty member of the San Francisco Conservatory's Preparatory Division.

Violist David Samuel received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from The Juilliard School as recipient of the Nathan Gordon Scholarship and the Jerome L. Greene Fellowship. He studied viola with Karen Tuttle, Michael Tree and Paul Hersh and chamber music with Emanuel Ax, Joseph Kalichstein and members of the Juilliard String Quartet. Mr. Samuel has performed in Canada, the U.S. and more than a dozen countries in Europe. His concerts have taken him to the Berlin Konzerthaus, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. As an orchestral musician, Mr. Samuel has been the principal violist of the Juilliard Orchestra and the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival Orchestra. As a chamber musician, his collaborators include Robert Mann, Bonnie Hampton, Norman Fischer, Martha Katz, and Pinchas Zukerman. Mr. Samuel has been a teaching assistant to Michael Tree and is currently a faculty member at the San Francisco Conservatory’s Preparatory Division.

Cellist Adrian Fung has given solo recitals in New York's Carnegie Hall, the Goethe Institute, Montreal's Pollack Hall, the Toronto Centre of the Performing Arts, the Living Arts Centre and Taiwan's National Concert Hall. He has appeared as soloist with Ensemble 212, the Columbia Chamber Players and the Oakville Symphony. Mr. Fung was awarded an Artist Grant from the New York Foundation of the Arts and received the Goodrich Award from the National Arts Centre of Canada. He has performed at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall and with the Orford Music Festival's Musicians On Tour and offered the premieres of several works, including pieces by Huck Hodge and those for the International Society of Contemporary Music. Mr. Fung studied cello with Bonnie Hampton, Jean-Michel Fonteneau, Fred Sherry, Antonio Lysy, David Hetherington and Susan Gagnon. An Osher Scholar, he received his Bachelor's degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and performance diplomas from McGill University and Mannes College.

Upcoming concerts in the series include Ran Dank, piano, Dec. 4, Imani Winds, Jan. 23, 2010, Noe Inui, violin, Feb. 20, 2010, Aleksandr Haskin, flute, March 20, 2010, and Leonardo Capalbo, tenor, April 17, 2010.

Further details are available by contacting the Concert Series Box Office, 724 805-2565 or www.stvincent.edu/concertseries. Or visit the Afiara website at http://afiara.com/category/media/.

Photo: Afiara String Quartet

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