The first concert of our 2024 Blue Hill Concert Association season features the Parker Quartet. The quartet is based in Boston and its members — Daniel Chong and Ken Hamao, violin; Jessica Bodner, viola; and Kee-Hyun Kim, cello — serve as professors and artists in residence at the Harvard University School of Music. Founded in 2002, the Parker Quartet celebrated their 20th anniversary last year with a special Beethoven Project “which include[d] performances of the complete cycle of Beethoven’s string quartets; the commissioning of six composers to write encores inspired by Beethoven’s quartets; the creation of a new video library spotlighting each Beethoven quartet; and bringing Beethoven’s music to non-traditional venues around the Quartet’s home base of Boston, including homeless shelters and youth programs.” This will be an encore performance for the quartet who played in Blue Hill during our 2018 season.
You may listen to the Parker Quartet in the two videos linked below. The first is a performance of Beethoven’s “String Quartet No. 15 in A minor” recorded in November 2020 at the New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall. The second is a 2018 performance of Stravinsky’s “Concertino for String Quartet.” We will be hosting the Parker Quartet at the Blue Hill Congregational Church at 3:00 pm on January 14, 2024.