Barry
Socher & Steve Scharf - Violins
Raymond Tischer - Viola • Armen Ksajikian - Cello
The
Armadillo String Quartet
is one of Los Angeles’s premier chamber
music groups, offering concerts in various venues locally
and in other parts of the world since its founding in
1980.
Advocates
for music old and new, the Armadillos have given numerous
world premiere performances, including many works written
for them, as well as concerts of older works, often
in new contexts or settings. The versatile ensemble
has played its varied repertoire in many established
chamber music series in the Los Angeles area, including
Monday Evening Concerts, the South Bay Chamber Music
Society, Chamber Music in Historic Sites, Sundays at
Four and the Pacific Composers’ Forum, and has
been featured at several festivals in Southern California,
such as the Santa Barbara Fall Music Festival, the Hindemith
Festival in Northridge and the Los Angeles Bach Festival.
They have performed in the 20th anniversary broadcast
tribute to National Public Radio and in a recorded tribute
to Kurt Weill, "Lost In The Stars". They have
produced their own concerts at various locations in
the Los Angeles area which have included a 34 1/2 -hour
marathon concert of the complete quartets of Joseph
Haydn. Since 1991 they have presented annual concerts
of the chamber music of Peter Schickele featuring the
composer in performance with the quartet and as commentator
on his works, which have included his String Quartet
No. 4, "Inter-era Dance Suite", in its world
premier performance in 1992.
The
quartet has given numerous programs especially for young
audiences including the series Children’s Concerts
in Historic Sites and programs sponsored by Chamber
Music America and the Pacific Composers Forum, one of
which led to the start of a more comprehensive music
program at the school in which they performed. They
have played for many school children at Los Angeles
Branch Libraries in concerts sponsored by the Library
Foundation of Los Angeles and in May 2003 they performed
a similar program at the Ojai Music Festival Family
Concert.
In addition
to concerts in traditional auditoriums the group has
performed in private homes and in a variety of non-traditional
concert sites, including Frank Lloyd Wright’s
Hollyhock House and galleries in the Southwest Museum,
the Gene Autry Western Museum and the William S. Hart
Museum. The most memorable of these unusual sites, however,
have been the natural theaters along the Colorado River
in the Grand Canyon and along other rivers in Oregon
and Utah during special whitewater rafting trips. The
Quartet traveled to Hong Kong in 1997 for a series of
concerts and debuted at Carnegie Hall in December 1999,
performing the World Premiere of the P. D. Q. Bach String
Quartet, “The Moose”.