AIANA STRING QUARTET

The Aiana SQ, praised by the Durango Herald as "spirited, precise and full of energy," performed both in the US and abroad, and was consistently lauded by audiences for highly emotional interpretations. The quartet was awarded the 2011 Coleman-Barstow Prize for Strings at the Coleman International Chamber Music Competition, and was the Young Professional Quartet in Residence at the University of Texas in Austin from 2011-2012, where were under the mentorship of the Miró Quartet. In the artistically rich city of Austin, the Aiana SQ worked to further explore their passion for new music and interdisciplinary work, in addition to increasing the breadth of their classic repertoire. The Aiana SQ was invited to perform a set in the Naxos NonClassical Showcase event at the 2012 South by Southwest Music Festival, gave several intimate house concerts around Austin, and accepted an engagement as featured artists in Extreme Art Theatre's inaugural gala for fall 2013.

Experienced as educators as well as performers, the Aiana SQ worked with children at Texas NeuroRehab Center and produced a show that featured students' visual and literary responses to the music of Béla Bartók. During their time as the Scholarship String quartet in Residence at the University of San Diego, The Aiana served as guest artists at the Canyon Crest Academy and coaches to SDSU students. Past outreach projects include a tour of Tijuana, Mexico with San Diego's Mainly Mozart, during which the quartet brought the music of Beethoven, Bartók, Mozart and Brahms to hundreds of children in ten low-income elementary schools.

As fellows at the 2011 Aspen Institute for Advanced Quartet Studies the Aiana worked closely with members of the Takács, American, Calder, Emerson, Cleveland and Juilliard Quartets, and performed on several faculty concerts. The Aiana was the featured string quartet at the 2011 International Clarinet Convention where they were invited to perform with several artists including Ricardo Morales and Joaquin Valdepeñas, principal clarinetists of the New York Philharmonic and Toronto Orchestras respectively.

The quartet gave several recitals with the Consortium of Southern California Chamber Music Presenters as winners of the 2011 Beverly Hills Auditions and participated in the Banff Chamber Music Residency program, and in the Deer Valley Music Festival-Emerging Quartets Program where they worked closely with young contemporary composers and premiered several new works.

The Quartet amicably disbanded in the winter of 2012, after all members concluded that their artistic visions had begun to diverge significantly.