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Discography

Miro Quartet

Conversation about the Miro Quartet Archive Project

The Miró Quartet (Daniel Ching, violin; William Fedkenheuer, John Largess, viola; and Joshua Gindele, cello) is one of America's most celebrated and dedicated string quartets, having been labeled by The New Yorker as "furiously committed" and noted by the Cleveland Plain-Dealer for their "exceptional tonal focus and interpretive intensity." For the past twenty years the Quartet has performed throughout the world on the most prestigious concert stages, earning accolades from passionate critics and audiences alike. Based in Austin, TX, and thriving on the area's storied music scene, the Miró  takes pride in finding new ways to communicate with audiences of all backgrounds while cultivating the longstanding tradition of chamber music.

 In their 2023-24 season, the Miró Quartet embarks on a new performance and recording project with pianist Lara Downes. Here on Earth features musical depictions of planet earth, its evolution, and the lives of its inhabitants, with works spanning a century of cultural shift that begins with Darius Milhaud’s La Création du Monde, performed in a new arrangement for piano and string quartet. Upcoming performances include the premiere of a new version of Kevin Puts’ Credo with the Naples Philharmonic, as well as performances for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, the Saratoga Perfoming Arts Center, and Premiere Performances in Hong Kong.Formed in 1995, the Miró Quartet was awarded first prize at several national and international competitions including the Banff International String Quartet Competition and the Naumburg Chamber Music Competition. Deeply committed to music education, members of the Quartet have given master classes at universities and conservatories throughout the world, and since 2003 the Miró has served as the quartet-in-residence at the University of Texas at Austin Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music. In 2005, the Quartet became the first ensemble ever to be awarded the coveted Avery Fisher Career Grant. Having released many celebrated recordings, the Miró recently produced an Emmy Award-winning multimedia project titled Transcendence. A work with visual and audio elements available on live stream, CD, and Blu-ray, Transcendence encompasses philanthropy and documentary filmmaking and is centered around a performance of Franz Schubert’s Quartet in G major on rare Stradivarius instruments. The Miró records independently and makes its music available on a global scale through Apple Music, Amazon, Spotify, Pandora, and YouTube. The Miró Quartet took its name and its inspiration from the Spanish artist Joan Miró, whose Surrealist works — with subject matter drawn from the realm of memory, dreams, and imaginative fantasy — are some of the most groundbreaking, influential, and admired of the 20th 

The Players:
Daniel Ching, a founding member of the Miró Quartet, began his violin studies at the age of 3 under tutelage of his father. At age 5, he entered the San Francisco Conservatory Preparatory Division on a full twelve-year scholarship, where he studied violin with Serban Rusu and Zaven Melikian, and chamber music with Susan Bates. At the age of 10, Daniel was first introduced to string quartets. A graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Daniel studied violin with Kathleen Winkler, Roland and Almita Vamos, and conducting with Robert Spano and Peter Jaffe. He completed his Masters degree at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied ...

Winner of the Lincoln Center Martin E. Segal Award, violinist William Fedkenheuer has distinguished himself as a versatile artist with international performances as soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician. William’s touring in the United States has included performances at The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall Presents, San Francisco Performances, and the National Gallery. Abroad, he has performed at the American Academy in Rome, Fountainbleu, Spoleto Festival of Two Worlds, the Taipei National University of the Arts, and in Austria at the famed Esterhazy Castle for the Haydn Festival in Eisenstadt ...

Violist John Largess began his studies in Boston at age 12 in the public schools, studying with Michael Zaretsky of the Boston Symphony, and later as a student of Michael Tree at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. In 1995, he graduated from Yale University to join the Colorado String Quartet as interim violist with whom he toured the United States and Canada teaching and concertizing. The following year he was appointed principal violist of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra in South Carolina, a position he held until joining the Miró Quartet in 1997. Also an active speaker and writer about all things chamber-musical ...

Cellist Joshua Gindele, a founding member of the Miró Quartet, began his cello studies at the age of 3 playing a viola his teacher had fitted with an endpin. As cellist for the Miró, Joshua has won numerous international awards including an Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the Cleveland Quartet Award and has shared the stage with Pinchas Zuckerman, Joshua Bell, Midori, Matt Haimovitz, Eliot Fisk, Leif Ove Andnes, and The Oak Ridge Boys. He continues to perform across four continents and on some of the world’s most prestigious concert stages. In his free time he regularly hikes, climbs, runs, goes to the gym ...