MoCA\CT Presents: Calidore String Quartet

  Date: Saturday, February 20, 2027 · 7:00 PM

  VIP: $110 · includes the pre-concert VIP reception and premium reserved table seating

  General Admission: $75

  Senior: $58

MoCA\CT Members receive a 10% discount on tickets.

VIP reception 6:00 PM · Concert 7:00 PM · MoCA\CT, 19 Newtown Turnpike, Westport, CT

In residence at Lincoln Center. This winter, in our galleries.

The string quartet was written for rooms exactly like ours. In residence with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Calidore String Quartet — hailed by The New York Times for its “deep reserves of virtuosity” and praised by The Los Angeles Times for “the kind of sublimity other quartets spend a lifetime searching for” — performs amid the contemporary art of MoCA\CT’s galleries, every bow stroke and breath at arm’s length. This is chamber music as it was meant to be heard: four musicians who “speak, breathe, think and feel as one” (The Washington Post), and an audience close enough to be drawn inside the conversation.

Winners of the Avery Fisher Career Grant and a BBC Music Magazine Award, recipients of the $100,000 M-Prize, and celebrated for their complete Beethoven cycle at Lincoln Center, the Calidore spotlight their acclaimed 2026 album American Tapestry — a sweeping survey of the American voice featuring Samuel Barber’s transcendent Adagio, Wynton Marsalis’s jazz-inflected At the Octoroon Balls, and the world-premiere quartet version of John Williams’s “With Malice Toward None,” arranged by the composer himself.

THE VIP EXPERIENCE

Arrive at 6:00 PM for an exclusive pre-concert reception in Gallery A — a private hour among the contemporary art with complimentary wine, craft cocktails, and a selection of artisanal hors d’oeuvres. Then settle in for the performance at your own reserved, lamplit bistro table. Wine, food, and the best seats in the house — the concert at its most luxurious.

ABOUT THE CALIDORE STRING QUARTET

The Calidore String Quartet has been recognized for achieving an extraordinary cohesion of individual artistry and collective expression—what The Washington Post described as “four more individual musicians are unimaginable, yet these speak, breathe, think and feel as one.” Lauded by The Los Angeles Times for performances that are “astonishing…the kind of sublimity other quartets spend a lifetime searching for,” the Quartet is distinguished by its expressive depth, commanding precision and interpretive clarity.

Formed at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in 2010, the quartet won the grand prize at the inaugural 2016 M-Prize Competition, sponsored by the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance. The $100,000 M-Prize was, at the time, the largest chamber-music award in the world. In February 2016, the Calidore String Quartet became the first North American ensemble to receive a fellowship from the London-based Borletti-Buitoni Trust. Within their first two years, the quartet won the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and the Coleman National Chamber Music Competition, and they earned top prizes at the 2012 ARD Munich String Quartet Competition and the Hamburg International Chamber Music Competition. In 2018, the Calidore Quartet received an Avery Fisher Career Grant.

With repertoire spanning the complete quartet cycles of Beethoven and Mendelssohn to works by visionary contemporary voices such as György Kurtág, Jörg Widmann, and Caroline Shaw, the Calidore brings what The New York Times called “deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct” to each performance. Their artistry reflects a profound engagement with both the classical canon and the evolving language of 21st-century chamber music.

ABOUT MoCA\CT PRESENTS

MoCA\CT Presents is the flagship concert series of the Museum of Contemporary Art Connecticut (MoCA\CT) — bringing Grammy and Emmy winners and internationally acclaimed artists to perform within our contemporary art galleries, here in Fairfield County. It is rare for a town the size of Westport to host artists of this caliber, and rarer still to experience them this close: the kind of evening you would expect in Manhattan, offered minutes from home. World-class artistry, intimately staged — Fairfield County’s premier destination for contemporary art and live performance.

Refund & Weather Policy

Tickets are transferable to another concert of your choice or other individuals. If a concert is cancelled due to weather conditions, tickets will be valid for the rescheduled date. Please consider the price of unused tickets as a donation. No refunds will be issued.