Hong Kong’s preeminent string ensemble, the Cong Quartet, present and evening of virtuosic works from the last 200 years, including the Asian Premiere of this year’s Cosmopolis Festival guest composer, Sheila Silver (USA).
The event is free and open to the public. Check back later for a link to register your seat.
Performers
Francis Yiu-Ting Chik, violin
Ayaka Ishiwatari, violin
Caleb Wong, viola
Yan-Ho Cheng, cello
Program
Igor Stravinsky: Three Pieces for String Quartet
Sheila Silver: Four Etudes and a Fantasy
Felix Mendelssohn: String Quartet in E minor, Op. 44 No. 2
Biographies
Formed in 2015 at the Indiana University in the USA, with four founding members from Hong Kong, the Cong Quartet was the Ensemble-in-Residence at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The quartet has also been in residence at Musique à Flaine, and was part of the Nederlandse Strijkkwartet Academie (NSKA), a musical partner of Domaine de La Garde in France, and a member of Le Dimore del Quartetto in Italy.
Drawing from the mentorship of the Pacifica Quartet at Jacobs School of Music, Ivan Chan at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, Quatuor Danel, and members of the Quatuor Ysaÿe and Quatuor Ebène in Europe, Cong Quartet’s journey has been fuelled by top prizes at the Virtuoso & Belcanto’s Chamber Music Competition in Italy, Salzburg Mozart International Chamber Music Competition, and as a laureate of many other competitions, including the Banff International String Quartet Competition and International Music Competition Triomphe de l'Art in Brussels.
The quartet has participated in numerous chamber music festivals, such as the Accademia Internazionale di Musica di Cagliari, Mimir Chamber Music Festival, String Quartet Biennale in Paris, Juilliard String Quartet Seminar, Robert Mann String Quartet Institute, Heifetz International Music Institute, Music in PyeongChang, the Ozawa International Chamber Music Academy, as well as the European Chamber Music Academy (ECMA), and Musethica in Europe. They have performed with world-renowned artists such as the Borromeo Quartet, Quatuor Danel, members of Jerusalem Quartet, Juan-Miguel Hernandez, Jorja Fleezanis, Joshua Bell, Enrico Pace and Yuri Bashmet, and many others.
During their two last seasons, the Cong Quartet has performed at the ACO on the Pier in Sydney, Philharmonie de Paris, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht. The quartet plays on a set of instruments made for their 10th anniversary, with wood from the same tree, by Yair Hod Fainas in Paris in 2025.
Sheila Silver is an important and vital voice in American music today. Her compositions have been commissioned and performed by numerous orchestras, ensembles, and soloists throughout the world. She has written in a wide range of mediums: from solo instrumental works to large orchestral works; from opera to feature film scores. Her musical language is a unique synthesis of the tonal and atonal worlds, coupled with a rhythmic complexity which is both masterful and compelling. Audiences and critics have praised her music as powerful and emotionally charged, accessible, and masterfully conceived. “Only a few composers in any generation enliven the art form with their musical language and herald new directions in music. Sheila Silver is such a visionary.” (Wetterauer Zeitung)
Her opera, A Thousand Splendid Suns, based on Khaled Hosseini’s international best-selling novel, was premiered in 2023 by the Seattle Opera to rave reviews and was short-listed for Best World Premiere by the International Opera Awards 2023. In preparation for and throughout the composing of this opera, Silver studied Hindustani music with the late Pandit Kedar Narayan Bodas in India, in order to incorporate an authentic Hindustani musical color into her score. A chamber opera version with the same cast and an orchestra of 12 is in the works, with the premiere to be announced soon.
Her honors include: a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship, numerous Opera America awards for the development of A Thousand Splendid Suns, the Sackler Prize in Music Composition for the opera The Wooden Sword; Bunting Institute Fellowship; the Rome Prize; the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Composer Award; NEA awards, two ISCM National Composers Competition wins; and awards and commissions from the Rockefeller Foundation (Bellagio Residency), the Camargo Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, New York State Council of the Arts, the Barlow Foundation, the Paul Fromm Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Cary Trust. Her music is published by Lauren Keiser Music, Mostly Marimba, and Argenta Music, and is recorded on various labels.
Born and raised in Seattle Washington, she earned her BA from University of California Berkeley (1968) and her PhD from Brandeis University (1976). Her mentors and teachers include Edwin Dugger, Erhard Karkoschka, György Ligeti, Arthur Berger, and Jacob Druckman. Sheila currently lives in Spencertown, New York, with her husband, filmmaker John Feldman. Silver is Professor Emerita of Music at the State University of New York, Stony Brook.