BRATTLEBORO — The award-winning Asylum Quartet, which includes Brattleboro native and Brattleboro Music Center (BMC) alumnus Tony Speranza, continues the BMC's 2015-16 Chamber Music Series with a March 18 concert.
The event - scheduled for 7:30 p.m. at Centre Congregational Church on Main Street - will include works by Gyorgy Ligeti, Claude Debussy, and Antonin Dvorak. Tickets are $30 for patrons, and $20 general admission.
Lauded for “nonstop virtuoso skills” and “evocative, educational, and refreshing” concerts, the Asylum Quartet's repertoire spans traditional, contemporary, and globally-minded works.
Joseph Abad, soprano saxophone; Tony Speranza, alto saxophone; Max Schwimmer, tenor saxophone; and Andrew Barnhart, baritone saxophone, met in 2011 as graduate students at the The Hartt School in West Hartford, Conn., and adopted their name from Asylum Hill, the storied Hartford neighborhood.
The quartet pays tribute to the cultural vitality of Asylum Hill through efforts to engage and captivate diverse audiences and contribute to the vibrancy of its home city.
The Asylum Quartet is Ensemble-in-Residence at Hartford's Christ Church Cathedral, bringing a second season of free community concerts in downtown Hartford through 2016. In partnership with Hartford Performs, the quartet provides educational music programming to students in Hartford and beyond.
Recent highlights include a showcase performance at the 2015 Chamber Music America Conference in New York City, a six-day residency with the Arts Alliance of Northern New Hampshire, and a full season of concerts, workshops, and master classes in southeastern Connecticut public schools as 2014-2015 Musical Masterworks Resident Ensemble.
The quartet has performed at the Boston Athaeneum, the Newport Music Festival, the Traverse City Film Festival, and the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, and has been a featured guest on WNPR's “Where We Live,” WWUH's “The 20th Century Limited,” WNMC's “Morning Jazz,” and WCRI's “Festival Series.”
Asylum received the Grand Prize in the 2014 International Chamber Music Ensemble Competition in Boston, becoming the first saxophone quartet to receive this honor.