Cassatt String Quartet to perform at Newhouse School April 17

Cassatt String Quartet to perform at Newhouse School April 17April 01, 2008Wendy S. Loughlinwsloughl@syr.edu

The S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications will host the Cassatt String Quartet on Thursday, April 17, at 7:30 p.m. in the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium, Newhouse 3. A reception will follow. The event is free and open to the public. Parking is available in SU pay lots.

Acclaimed as one of America’s outstanding ensembles, the New York City-based Cassatt String Quartet served as quartet-in-residence at the Rose, Jules R. and Stanford S. Setnor School of Music in SU’s College of Visual and Performing Arts from 1996 until this year. The Newhouse concert will inaugurate the new Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium as a chamber music auditorium. The quartet will perform music by Maurice Ravel and Antonin Dvorak.

“We are eager to test the new Hergenhan Auditorium as a venue for chamber music, and what better group to employ for our test than the Cassatt Quartet, a friend to all chamber music lovers in Central New York and one of the country’s leading string quartets,” says Newhouse Dean David M. Rubin. “The two pieces they are playing, by Ravel and Dvorak, are sure to please everyone, regardless of their familiarity with the repertoire.”

The Cassatt String Quartet has performed throughout North America, Europe and the Far East, with prestigious appearances at Alice Tully Hall and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York City; the Tanglewood Music Theatre in Lenox, Mass.; the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.; the Theatre des Champs-Elysees in Paris; and Maeda Hall in Tokyo. Cited three times by The New Yorker magazine’s Best of the Year CD Selection, they have recorded for the Koch, New World, Albany and CRI labels.

The Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium was made possible by a generous gift from Newhouse alumna and SU trustee Joyce Hergenhan ’63 and is a prominent feature of Newhouse 3, the Newhouse School’s new, 74,000-square-foot addition, which opened last fall.

For more information about the Cassatt String Quartet, visit http://www.cassattquartet.com. For more information about the concert or to R.S.V.P., contact Misty Schutt at (315) 443-2302.