Avaloch EAR Initiative

The Educational Artist Residency (EAR) Initiative seeks to bring in distinguished musicians and ensembles for a week of off-campus interactive workshops and masterclasses with surrounding schools and educational institutions.

EAR Residencies will also offer a unique, on-campus, residential opportunities for music lovers, enthusiasts and instrumentalists-- providing an opportunity where they can live, dine, socialize and learn alongside incredible performers, musicologists and composers, exploring historical and cultural contexts of the artists' repertoire and musical lineage.

2025 Season EAR Artists-in-Residence

The Balourdet

Quartet

May 5-11, 2025

The Balourdet Quartet is acclaimed for their vibrant energy and masterful blend of technical precision and emotional depth that brings a fresh perspective to both beloved classics and modern compositions. Its unique closeness and willingness to take creative risks earned it the 2024 Avery Fisher Career Grant, as well as Chamber Music America’s 2024 Cleveland Quartet Award. With more than 70 concerts per season, recent highlights include the Balourdet’s debuts at Carnegie and Wigmore Halls, and new string quartets by composers Karim Al-Zand, Paul Novak, and Nicky Sohn through grants from Chamber Music America (2021) and the Barlow Foundation (2023).

Committed to sharing their musical values with the next generation, the quartet has served regularly as faculty at the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival, JDR Summer Music Academy, Berkshire Summer Music, and Opus Chamber Music. They have also given masterclasses and coachings at Northwestern University, University of Michigan, Rice University, Emory University, New England Conservatory Preparatory Department, Fischoff Chamber Music Academy, Upper Valley Chamber Music, and Wright State University. 

In 2021, the Quartet won the Grand Prize at New York’s Concert Artists Guild Competition, which included joint management by Concert Artists Guild in the U.S., and Young Classical Artist’s Trust (YCAT) in the UK and Europe. In addition, the Balourdet has been prizewinners in Canada’s Banff International String Quartet Competition, the International Premio Paolo Borciani Competition in Italy, Gold Medal winners at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, and Gold Medal and Audience Prizewinners at the Yellow Springs Competition.

Visit www.balourdetquartet.com for more information and live performance media.

As part of their EAR Residency, the Balourdet Quartet will be leading a special EAR Chamber Music Workshop from Thursday May 8-Sunday May 11, 2025, focusing on the Art of Quartet Playing. This is open to all string quartet enthusiasts who wish to hone their ensemble skills, work in depth on a specific piece, play alongside members from one of the most accomplished young professional string quartets, and make new friends with informal sightreading sessions. To learn more about the workshop and to sign up, please click on the link below!

Baroque band ACRONYM — an "outstanding young early-music string ensemble" (The New Yorker)—is dedicated to giving modern premieres of the wild instrumental music of the seventeenth century. Playing with “...consummate style, grace, and unity of spirit” (The New York Times), the group formed in 2012 and has released ten critically acclaimed CDs since 2014. Recent projects include the first modern performances and recordings of works by Biber, Rosenmüller, Capricornus, and more. The band’s most recent album, Cantica Obsoleta (2020), features the modern premiere recordings of nearly-lost works from Sweden’s Düben Collection. The Boston Globe raves, “this musical time-capsule offers enough resplendence to transport anyone.”

Recent and upcoming engagements for ACRONYM include the Boston Early Music Festival, Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht (Netherlands), Music Before 1800 (NYC), Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston), Naumburg Orchestral Concerts (NYC),  Oberlin’s Artist Recital Series, Hamilton College Performing Arts Series (Clinton, NY), Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival (OH), Lincoln Friends of Chamber Music (NE), Arizona Early Music, Indianapolis Early Music Festival, Renaissance & Baroque (Pittsburgh), Chamber Music Wilmington (NC), Electric Earth Concerts (Peterborough, NH), and Five Boroughs Music Festival in New York City. ACRONYM has held academic residencies at Youngstown State University and Vassar College, and the group’s musicians can be heard in Tafelmusik, Les Arts Florissants, Apollo’s Fire, Handel and Haydn Society and the English Concert.