MARLBORO-The first performance in Marlboro Music's 2025–26 artist residency series spotlights the newly formed Phaidros String Quartet. Their performance takes place Sunday, Nov. 9, at 2 pm. Admission is free. Reservations are required.
Now in its second season, Marlboro Music's artist residency program brings emerging chamber music ensembles to the Marlboro campus throughout the year for creative work and concert offerings. Each group is in residence for 1 to 3 weeks, spending concentrated time together in a retreat-like environment where they can rehearse new programming, prepare for recording projects, develop community engagement programming, and more.
Every ensemble in residence includes at least one Marlboro Music artist, and each residency culminates with a free informal concert, in which the groups share the results of their work with the local community.
Phaidros String Quartet consists of Marlboro Music violinists Stephanie Zyzak, Claire Bourg, and Zhanbo Zheng, and cellist Leland Ko. They will perform Haydn's quartet in A major, Op. 20, No. 6; Kurtág's "Officium breve in memoriam Andreae Szervánszky," Op. 28; and Beethoven's quartet in F major, Op. 59, No. 1.
The quartet takes its name from Plato's "Phaedrus," which is a dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus (romanized: Phaidros), and covers subjects ranging from love and friendship to rhetoric and the human soul. Phaedrus also serves as a central symbolic figure in Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as a means of discussing the tension between the classical (rational) and romantic (emotional) minds.
Though the quartet's journey began in the fall of 2024 in New York City, its members say they developed friendships over the course of a decade as classmates and colleagues at various schools and summer festivals.
As a young quartet, they are using their Marlboro residency as a period of intensive rehearsal, developing their sound and point of view.
Admission to the Marlboro Music residency concerts is free, and all are welcome. Reservations are required and open approximately four weeks before each event. Seating is general admission. For more information, audiences may visit potashhill.org/concerts or email info@marlboromusic.org.
So that they can accommodate additional audience members, the Nov. 9 performance has been moved to the Marlboro Dining Hall, 2582 South Rd. (from Ragle Hall).
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