Formed in 1985 with the encouragement of the Juilliard Quartet, the Cassatt initiated and served as the inaugural participants in Juilliard's Young Artists Quartet Program. Their numerous awards include a Tanglewood Chamber Music Fellowship, the Wardwell Chamber Music Fellowship at Yale (where they served as teaching assistants to the Tokyo Quartet), First Prizes at the Fischoff and Coleman Chamber Music Competitions, two top prizes at the Banff International String Quartet Competition, two CMA/ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming, a recording grant from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, and commissioning grants from Meet the Composer and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2004, they were selected for the centennial celebration of the Coleman Chamber Music Association in Pasedena, California.

The Cassatt celebrated its twentieth anniversary in 2006 with a series of world-premieres and a performance at the Library of Congress on the Library's Stradivarius Collection. Having recently completed successful debuts in Italy and Mexico, the Cassatt celebrates American composer Joan Tower's 70th birthday this fall with a series of concerts at New York City's Symphony Space along with three premieres of quartets by Libby Larsen, Dan Welcher and Sebastian Currier.

In 2009, the Cassatt returns to Chicago's Northwestern University with cellist, Marc Johnson of the esteemed Vermeer Quartet. Their Texas high school educational residency, Cassatt in the Basin includes intensive workshops, coachings and rehearsals culminating in the premiere of Larry Dillon's Triple Quartet in a side-by-side performance of students with the Cassatt. Finally, the Cassatt joins the Buglisi Dance Company at New York's Joyce Theater and premieres the NEA commission of Libby Larsen's work for Quartet and children's choir with the Syracuse Children's Choir. Selected by Chamber Music America, they will serve as guest artists for one of its New Music Institutes across New York State; a series to help presenters market new music to their audiences.

Equally adept at classical masterpieces and contemporary music, the Cassatt has collaborated with a remarkable array of artists/composers including pianist Marc-André Hamelin, soprano Susan Narucki, flutist Ransom Wilson, jazz pianist Fred Hersch, didgeriedoo player Simon 7, the Trisha Brown Dance Company, distinguished members of the Cleveland and Vermeer Quartets, and composers Louis Andriessen and John Harbison.

With a deep commitment to nurturing young musicians, the Cassatt, in residencies at Princeton, Yale, Syracuse University, the University at Buffalo and the University of Pennsylvania, has devoted itself to coaching, conducting sectionals and reading student composers' works, while offering lively musical presentations in music theory, history and composition.

Summer finds them in residence at the Hartwick College Summer Music Festival and the innovative Seal Bay Festival of Contemporary American Chamber Music. Next summer, the Cassatt along with tenor, James Taylor perform for the eightieth season of Music Mountain in Connecticut.

This season, the Cassatt adds to its extensive collection of premiere recordings with the release of two CD's on the Naxos Label; works by Andy Teirstien and Dan Welcher's three Quartets, including his new work Cassatt.

Named three times by The New Yorker magazine's Best Of...CD Selection, the Cassatt's discography includes eclectic new quartets by Pulitizer Prize-winner Steven Stucky and Tina Davidson (Albany Records), by Daniel S. Godfrey (Koch International Classics) and by Rome Prize-winner Sebastian Currier (New World) as critiqued in The New York Times "(Quartetset) was written for the Cassatt... which plays it strongly here."

The Cassatt has recorded for the Koch, Naxos, New World, Point, CRI, Tzadik and Albany labels and is named for the celebrated American impressionist painter Mary Cassatt.

www.cassattquartet.com