Del Sol String Quartet: About
left to right: Kate Stenberg, Rick Shinozaki, Charlton Lee, Kathryn Bates Williams"Provocative as usual, the Del Sol Quartet jumps cultures, continents in its brilliant recital"
- San Francisco Classical Voice
The San Francisco based Del Sol String Quartet, two-time winner of the top Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, is breaking the boundaries of classical music in riveting performances of new music with a global pulse.
Critically acclaimed as “steeped in bravery and imagination,” this high energy quartet of master musicians explores new ways to interact with audiences, composers and artists across cultures and art forms. Del Sol commissions and performs accessible new music from the brightest living voices around the world. Many of the group’s captivating performances include innovative collaborations with electronica and traditional instruments from other cultures – Asian, Latin American and indigenous Australian. Del Sol also has astounded audiences with one-of-a-kind multimedia dance, video and opera productions.
Del Sol’s members are violinists Kate Stenberg and Rick Shinozaki, violist Charlton Lee and cellist Kathryn Bates Williams. Since its inception in 1992 at the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Quartet has worked its magic performing on prominent concert series nationwide, including the Kennedy Center, Smithsonian Museum, Library of Congress and National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, Symphony Space in New York City, the Other Minds Festival of New Music in San Francisco, the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua New York, the Santa Fe Opera New Music Series, Candlelight Concerts in Columbia, MD, the University of Vermont Lane Series and the bi-coastal 2010 Pacific Rim Festival co-presented by the University of California at Santa Cruz and Brandeis University in Waltham, MA.
Del Sol’s four commercial CD releases have been universally praised by critics, including Gramophone, which hailed the quartet as “masters of all musical things,” and The Strad, which lauded the ensemble’s “gloriously opulent, full-throated tone.”
With its deep commitment to education, Del Sol has reached thousands of K-12 students through inventive school performances, workshops, coaching and residencies. The Quartet members also have worked closely with student composers, musicians and faculty artists at universities across the country, including Dartmouth, MIT, Brandeis, Northeastern, University of New Mexico, University of California at Berkeley and Santa Cruz, the Manhattan School of Music and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, among others.
INDIVIDUAL ARTIST BIOS
Kate Stenberg, first violinist with the Del Sol String Quartet, also has performed as a soloist in the U.S., Europe, Mexico, Canada and South Korea. Her solo playing at the Other Minds "New Music Séance" was described by New Music Box as "highly virtuosic and deeply communicative . . . a startlingly powered interpretation, full of character and presence." Her forthcoming CD from Other Minds Records will reprise maverick contemporary repertoire she has performed at the New Music Séance concerts (2005-2008) and include several world premiere recordings. Kate was a founding member of Bay Area contemporary music groups Left Coast and The Real Vocal String Quartet. She has performed with cellists Bonnie Hampton, Joan Jeanrenaud, and Jean-Michel Fonteneau and with pianists Eva-Maria Zimmermann, Lisa Moore, and Sarah Cahill. She has recorded with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, Stratos, and Del Sol and also plays on occasion with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. A Bay Area native, Kate was raised in a dynamic musical family of professional musicians. She graduated from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and received her Master’s degree from the Eastman School of Music.
Rick Shinozaki, violinist, is principal second violin of Symphony Silicon Valley and concertmaster of the Nova Vista Symphony. Solo appearances include the world premiere of Viennese composer Zdzislaw Wysocki's Concerto for Two Violins and Orchestra under Kent Nagano and the Berkeley Symphony. Rick has collaborated closely with Bay Area composers Mark Fish and Durwynne Hsieh, commissioning, performing and editing their work, most notably premiering Hsieh's Concerto for Marimba, Violin and Orchestra with the Marin Symphony. With pianist Irene Jacobson, the Shinozaki-Jacobson Duo has delighted audiences with an eclectic repertoire and interpretations cited as "scintillating" and "in perfect harmony," resulting in the release of their first recording for the Latin American Chamber Music Society. Rick is a protégé of Serban Rusu of Tiburon; he also studied extensively with legendary pedagogue Josef Gingold and Yuval Yaron at Indiana University, from which he holds a Master of Music degree.
Charlton Lee, violist, has performed throughout North America and Europe both as a chamber musician and soloist. He founded the award-winning Del Sol String Quartet, which specializes in contemporary music and mixed-media productions, in 1992 at the renowned Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada. He is sought after as an educator, chamber music coach, and jurist, with teaching experience at San Francisco State University, San Francisco School of the Arts, Steamboat Springs and Oaxaca music festivals, and he coaches regularly for Chamber Musicians of Northern California and the Symphony of the Redwoods. Charlton also teams up with his wife, Eva-Maria Zimmermann, to perform duo pieces for viola and piano. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics and Physics from the University of California at Berkeley and his Master’s degree in Music from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Kathryn Bates Williams, cellist, hailed by the New York Times as "a cellist with a beautifully rounded sound," has a passionate commitment to her art form by embracing tradition while exploring innovation in all genres of performance. She has served as the cellist of the New Fromm Players at the Tanglewood Music Center, where her performances have been called "the revelation of the concert" and "electrifying" (Boston Globe). After working with various new music ensembles, including the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble and Ensemble Parallèle, Kathryn co-founded the New Spectrum Ensemble to bridge the gap between contemporary and standard repertoire and break down the barrier between audience and performer. A native of historic Concord, Massachusetts, Kathryn received her B.M. degree from Rice University Shepherd School of Music, under the direction of Norman Fischer, and Master's degree in Chamber Music from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Mark Kosower and Jean-Michel Fonteneau.