The Calder Quartet, called 'outstanding' and 'superb' by The New York Times, performs a broad range of repertoire at an exceptional level, always striving to channel and fulfill the composer’s vision. Already the choice of many leading composers to perform their works—including Christopher Rouse, Terry Riley, Peter Eotvos, and Thomas Adès—the group’s distinctive approach is exemplified by a musical curiosity brought to everything they perform, whether it’s Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, or rock shows with bands like The National or Vampire Weekend. Winners of a 2014 Avery Fisher Career Grant, they are known for the discovery, commissioning, recording and mentoring of some of today’s best emerging composers (over thirty commissioned works to date), the group continues to work and collaborate with artists across musical genres. Inspired by innovative American artist Alexander Calder, the Calder Quartet’s desire to bring immediacy and context to the works they perform creates an artfully crafted musical experience.

Recent seasons includes debuts for the Calder Quartet at New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Washington Performing Arts Society, London’s Wigmore Hall, The Edinburgh Festival, The Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, The Mozarteum in Salzburg, Cal Performances, The Cleveland Orchestra at the Cleveland Museum of Art, The Melbourne Festival, The Adelaide Festival, the Ojai Festival, and the Sante Fe Chamber Music Festival. The quartet recently appeared on the Grammy-nominated Harmonia Mundi release The Edge of Light featuring Messaien and Saariaho with pianist Gloria Cheng, and the Emmy-Award winning main title theme to Da Vinci’s Demons by Bear McCreary.

The group worked directly with Thomas Adès on a performance of Arcadiana as part of the Green Umbrella Series at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. The relationship evolved into collaborating on concerts together at the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra’s Konserthuset in 2009, the Melbourne Festival in 2010, and at CAL Performances in 2011. Of the Stockholm performance, The Guardian said, 'the Calder Quartet played the most insightful and moving performance of Thomas Adès’s Arcadiana I’ve ever heard'.

The Calder Quartet formed at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music and continued studies at the Colburn Conservatory of Music with Ronald Leonard, and at the Juilliard School, where it received the Artist Diploma in Chamber Music Studies as the Juilliard Graduate Resident String Quartet, and the Hochscule fur Music Hans Eisler in Berlin with Eberhard Feltz.