String Quintet, "A Shattered Vessel"

Richard Danielpour has been commissioned by many international artists, including soloists Yo-Yo Ma, Jessye Norman, Dawn Upshaw, Emanuel Ax, Gil Shaham, Frederica von Stade, Thomas Hampson, Anthony McGill, and Gary Graffman; the Guarneri and Emerson string quartets; and the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. He has also received commissions from the New York City, Pacific Northwest, and Nashville ballets; the Philadelphia and Stuttgart Radio Symphony orchestras; the Mariinsky and Vienna chamber orchestras; the New York Philharmonic; Orchestre National de France; the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, among others.

Dr. Danielpour has received a Grammy Award, two Rockefeller Foundation grants, the Berlin Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin, two awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Joseph H. Bearns Prize in Music from Columbia University.

Recent works include Carnival of the Ancients for piano and orchestra, String Quartet No. 8, and The Passion of Yeshua, a passion oratorio in Hebrew and English.

Dr. Danielpour has recorded for the Naxos and Sony Classical labels. His music is published by Lean Kat Music and Associated Music Publishers.

Dr. Danielpour served on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music from 1993 to 2017, and has served as professor of music at the Herb Alpert School of Music at UCLA since 2017. He joined the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in 1997.

Internationally acclaimed as a violist as well as a violinist, the versatile Ida Kavafian is an artist-member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and former violinist of the Beaux Arts Trio. For 34 years she has been artistic director of Music from Angel Fire in New Mexico, where some 200 Curtis students have participated in the Young Artist Program to date. She was a founder of the Bravo! Colorado festival, serving as its artistic director for ten years; and co-founded the chamber ensembles Opus One, Tashi, and Trio Valtorna. She also performs as a soloist and in recital with her sister, violinist Ani Kavafian.

Ms. Kavafian has premiered numerous works, including concertos by Toru Takemitsu and Michael Daugherty, whose Fire and Blood she recorded with the Detroit Symphony. She has toured and recorded with jazz artists Chick Corea and Wynton Marsalis, and with fiddler/composer Mark O’Connor.

Born in Istanbul of Armenian parentage, Ms. Kavafian is a graduate of the Juilliard School, where she studied with Oscar Shumsky. She made her debut through Young Concert Artists with the pianist Peter Serkin, and also received the coveted Avery Fisher Career Grant. She resides with her husband, violist Steven Tenenbom, in Philadelphia and Connecticut, where they breed and train prizewinning Hungarian vizsla show dogs.

Since 1998 Ms. Kavafian has served on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music, where she received the 2013 Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching. She also teaches at the Juilliard School and the Bard College Conservatory of Music.

Peter Wiley, a 1974 graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, has played at leading festivals including the Marlboro Music Festival, for which he also tours and records. As a recitalist he has appeared at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. A member of the Beaux Arts Trio from 1987 to 1998, Mr. Wiley also succeeded his teacher, David Soyer, as cellist of the Guarneri String Quartet from 2001 to 2009. He is a member of the piano quartet Opus One, with Curtis faculty members Ida Kavafian and Steven Tenenbom and pianist Anne-Marie McDermott.

Mr. Wiley entered Curtis at age thirteen. At twenty he was named principal cello of the Cincinnati Symphony, after one year with the Pittsburgh Symphony. He made his concerto debut at Carnegie Hall in 1986 with the New York String Orchestra conducted by Alexander Schneider.

A past recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, Mr. Wiley joined the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in 1996. He also teaches at Bard College Conservatory of Music.

English cellist Frankie Carr was born into a family of string players. Following studies at the Yehudi Menuhin School, he performed at festivals across Europe and North America, including Kneisel Hall, Music from Angel Fire, Four Seasons Chamber Music, Loon Lake Live, Stichting Kamermusiek Amsterdam, YPF Amsterdam, the Menuhin Festival Gstaad, and Greenwood. 

Mr. Carr’s principal teachers include Colin Carr, Melissa Phelps, Thomas Carroll, Darrett Adkins, Carter Brey, and Peter Wiley. He has also worked with Johannes Goritsky, Joel Krosnick, and members of the Chiara, Emerson, and Juilliard string quartets. Mr. Carr is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music (Cello ʼ21 and Community Artist Fellow ʼ23) and from 2023 to 2025 he will participate in Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect Fellowship program. In his free time, he enjoys long walks and bird watching.