MIDDLEBURY — The acclaimed Brentano String Quartet returns to Middlebury on Friday, April 26, this time joined by five-time Grammy Award-winning soprano Dawn Upshaw. The Brentano Quartet will play Haydn’s Op. 20 No. 2 and Bartók’s second quartet, and then will join Upshaw for performances of Schoenberg’s second quartet and Respighi’s Il Tramonto (The Sunset).
Both Brentano and Upshaw performed individually as part of the Performing Arts Series two years ago, and were very well received. When Director Allison Coyne Carroll heard that the two were developing a collaborative concert, she jumped at the chance to bring them back.  “To have this much talent performing together on our Robison Hall stage will most surely be unforgettable,” she said.
About the Brentano Quartet
Since its inception in 1992, the Brentano String Quartet — including violinists Mark Steinberg and Serena Canin, violist Misha Amory, and cellist Nina Lee — has appeared throughout the world to popular and critical acclaim, performing in such prestigious venues as Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall in New York, the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., the Konzerthaus in Vienna, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, and the Sydney Opera House. The Quartet had its first European tour in 1997, and was honored in the U.K. with the Royal Philharmonic Award for Most Outstanding Debut.
The Quartet are Artists in Residence at Yale University, following a long-term residency at Princeton, and also the collaborative ensemble for the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. In 2012, the Quartet provided the central music (Beethoven Opus 131) for the critically acclaimed independent film “A Late Quartet,” starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Christopher Walken.
The Quartet is named for Antonie Brentano, whom many scholars consider to be Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved,” the intended recipient of his famous love confession.
About Dawn Upshaw
Dawn Upshaw, soprano, has achieved worldwide celebrity as a singer of a wide-ranging opera and concert repertoire. Her acclaimed performances on the opera stage comprise the great Mozart roles as well as modern works by Stravinsky, Poulenc and Messiaen. On world stages, including the Metropolitan Opera, where she began her career in 1984 and has since made nearly 300 appearances, Upshaw has also championed numerous new works created for her including “The Great Gatsby” by John Harbison and the Grawemeyer Award-winning opera “L’Amour de Loin” by Kaija Saariaho.
In 2007, Upshaw was named a MacArthur Fellow — the first vocal artist to be awarded the five-year “genius” prize — and in 2008 she was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. A five-time Grammy Award winner, she is featured on more than 50 recordings, including the million-selling Symphony No. 3 by Henryk Gorecki for Nonesuch Records. Her most recent Grammy was the 2014 Best Classical Vocal Solo Grammy for Maria Schneider’s “Winter Morning Walks” on the ArtistShare Label.
Upshaw is Artistic Director of the Vocal Arts Program at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, and the Head of the Vocal Arts Program at the Tanglewood Music Center.
We’re in for a treat with this one. Mark your calendars to see Upshaw and the Brentano String Quartet perform on Friday, April 26, at 7:30 p.m., at the Mahaney Arts Center’s Robison Hall. Reserved seating tickets are $30 for adults; $25 for Middlebury College faculty, staff, emeriti, and alumni; $10 for youth; and $6 for Middlebury College students; and are on sale at 802-443-MIDD (6433) or middlebury.edu/arts/tickets.