INTERNATIONALLY ACCLAIMED STRING QUARTET TO PERFORM

The Alexander String Quartet, widely admired for its interpretations of Beethoven, Mozart and Shostakovich, will perform at Bryn Mawr on Friday, March 31, at 8 p.m. in Thomas Great Hall.

The quartet's appearance at Bryn Mawr is part of the College's yearlong Performing Arts Series, featuring some of this country's finest artists and musicians. Tickets to the upcoming concert are $15 for the general public, $12.50 for seniors and Bryn Mawr faculty and staff, and $5 for Bryn Mawr, Haverford and Swarthmore students. For tickets, call the Office for the Arts at 610-526-5210.

Now in its 25th season, the Alexander String Quartet has garnered praise in major music capitals throughout Europe and North America. Within a year of its formation in 1981, the ensemble became the first string quartet to win the internationally recognized Concert Artists Guild Competition. In 1985, the ensemble became the first and only American quartet to win the London International String Quartet competition, receiving both the jury's highest award and the Audience Prize.

Besides its concerts in New York City at Lincoln Center, the 92nd Street Y and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alexander String Quartet has performed at the Library of Congress and Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., and at chamber-music societies and colleges and universities throughout the United States. The ensemble has also appeared in numerous European venues including the Lichtenstein Palace in Prague, Wigmore Hall in London, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and at the Vigo Festival in Spain.

Along with its classical repertory, the quartet has become an important advocate of new music through more than two dozen commissions and numerous premiere performances. Last July the quartet collaborated with jazz saxophonist David Sánchez in a performance of Eddie Sauter's "Focus" at the Montreal Jazz Festival.

The ensemble's recent premieres have included "Rising Chanting" by Augusta Read Thomas, commissioned for the quartet by the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Illinois; String Quartets Nos. 2 and 3 by Pulitzer Prize-winner Wayne Peterson; and works by Ross Bauer, Richard Festinger, David Sheinfeld and Hi Kyung Kim.

Headquartered in San Francisco, the Alexander String Quartet serves as the ensemble-in-residence of San Francisco Performances, an independent organization presenting chamber music, vocal and instrumental recitals, jazz and contemporary dance. Its members, violinists Zakarias Grafilo and Frederick Lifsitz, cellist Sandy Wilson and Paul Yarbrough, who plays the viola, also are directors of the Morrison Chamber Music Center at San Francisco State University's School of Music and Dance.

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