Amernet String Quartet plays the music of Steven R. Gerber

Lauded for their “intelligence” and “immensely satisfying” playing by the New York Times, the Amernet String Quartet has garnered worldwide praise and recognition as one of today’s exceptional string quartets. Ensemble-in-Residence at Florida International University in Miami since 2004, the group was formed in 1991 while its founding members were students at the Juilliard School. The Amernet quickly rose to international attention after their first season, winning the gold medal at the Tokyo International Music Competition, before being named first prize winners of the prestigious Banff International String Quartet Competition.
 
The Amernet’s busy performance schedule has taken the quartet across the Americas and to Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. They have collaborated with many of today’s most prominent artists and ensembles including the Tokyo, St. Lawrence, and Ying quartets as well as Shmuel Ashkenasi, Robert deMaine, Andres Diaz, Roberto Diaz, David Ehrlich, Guillermo Figeuroa, Yehuda Hanani, Gary Hoffman, Marc Johnson, Ida Kavafian, Paul Katz, Anton Kuerti, Ruth Laredo, Seymour Lipkin, Valentina Lisitsa, Anthony McGill, Rainer Moog, Christopher Rex, Nathaniel Rosen, Barry Snyder, James Tocco, Kyung Wha-Chung, and Zvi Zeitlin.
 
Prior to their current position at Florida International University, the Amernet held posts as Corbett String Quartet-in-Residence at Northern Kentucky University and at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Additionally, during 2004-2005 the ensemble served as the Ernst Stiefel Quartet-in-Residence at the Caramoor Center for the Arts. Among the Amernet’s notable engagements have been appearances at Ravinia, Lincoln Center, the Harvard Musical Association, and Princeton University, and at major festivals around the world, including Lucerne, San Miguel de Allende, Aviv (Israel), Colima (Mexico), Great Lakes, Maui, Mostly Mozart, Music in the Mountains, Maverick Concerts, Morelia, and Bowdoin.
 
The Amernet Quartet has conducted workshops and master classes in Buffalo, Erie, Los Angeles, Memphis, and New Orleans, among other cities, as well as visiting residencies at institutions including Columbia, Penn State, and Western Illinois universities and at Antioch and Wiliams colleges. They founded the Norse Festival, a summer chamber music workshop at Northern Kentucky University, and currently host an annual summer chamber music camp in Miami called Animato.
 
The Amernet String Quartet has received grants from the Corbett Foundation, the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, the LaSalle Foundation, the Fine Arts Fund, the Cincinnati Chamber Music Society, and the Amernet Society for school outreach projects; the commissioning of new chamber music works; and their unique concert and conversation series. The group was the recipient of a Chamber Music Rural Residency Award in 1995. During that year they divided their time among the communities of Johnstown, Somerset, and Indiana, Pennsylvania.
 
The Amernet has always been committed to the music of our time and has commissioned works from many of today’s leading composers, working closely with composers including Anthony Brandt, John Corigliano, Stephen Dankner, David Epstein, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Harold Meltzer, Gerhard Samuel, Morton Subotnick, and Dmitri Tymoczko. Additionally, the group has made many recordings, among which are the Concerto for Clarinet, Oboe, String Quartet and Bass by John Harbison with Sara Lambert Bloom and Charles Neidich as soloists; The Butterflies Began to Sing, a work for string quartet, bass, MIDI keyboard and computer by Morton Subotnick; an album of quartets by the American composer Stephen Dankner; the string quartet and double bass quintet of Dmitri Tymoczko; and a pairing of the Debussy String Quartet and the Chausson Concert for Piano, Violin, and String Quartet, with James Tocco and Yehonatan Berick. In addition, the Amernet is keen on exploring collaborative projects, and has recently appeared with jazz pianist Steve Allee; onstage with Josée Garant Dance; and with the Kruger Brothers. The Amernet also actively advocates for neglected works of the past and aims to enliven the concert experience through its innovative programming.
 
The Amernet String Quartet’s current season includes appearances at the Festival Internacional Cervantino; the Kennedy Center for both the Fortas concerts and in collaboration with Cantor Netanel Hershtik for Pro Musica Hebraica; and as soloists with the Princeton University Orchestra, as well as the premieres of several new works for quartet and return engagements in Canada, Latin America, and Israel.
 
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“Steven Gerber[‘s] music is handsomely wrought, evocative and communicative without pandering…” Steve Smith, Time Out New York
 
“Steven R. Gerber has one of the most direct and readily accessible voices in contemporary American music…Gerber’s urgent, highly charged language arouses graphic emotions, even at first hearing.” (Amazon Rough Guides/online)
 
“…an important addition to music in the late 20th century, its sense of evolution from previous generations welcome at a time when change seems to have become a virtue in istelf.” (Fanfare)
 
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Steven R. Gerber was born in 1948 in Washington, D.C. and now lives in New York City. He received degrees from Haverford College and from Princeton University, where he received a 4-year fellowship. His composition teachers included Robert Parris, J. K. Randall, Earl Kim, and Milton Babbitt.
 
Two CDs of Gerber’s orchestral works were released on major labels in 2000. Chandos issued his Symphony No. 1, Dirge and Awakening, Viola Concerto, and Triple Overture, played by the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra under Thomas Sanderling, with Lars Anders Tomter, viola, and the Bekova Sisters Trio. [CD details] KOCH International Classics, under a grant from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, released his Violin Concerto, Cello Concerto, and Serenade for String Orchestra, played by the National Chamber Orchestra under Piotr Gajewski, with soloists Kurt Nikkanen and Carter Brey. [CD details] After the American premiere of his Violin Concerto at the Concert Hall of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1995 by Nikkanen and the National Chamber Orchestra under Gajewski, the Washington Post called it “a major addition to the contemporary violin repertoire: lyrical, passionate, beautifully tailored to the instrument’s character and capabilities…Gerber has revived the spirit of romanticism in this work, with a strong sense of tonal melody and of the dramatic effects and surprises still possible in traditional forms…one of the year’s most memorable events.” And when Carter Brey premiered his Cello Concerto with the same orchestra and conductor in 1996, the Washington Post said, “Gerber’s concerto seems to have what it takes to establish a foothold…. The music is composed with a fine sense of instrumental color…. Gerber has given his soloist some fine, expressive melodies.”
 
Recent works of Gerber’s include a Viola Concerto written for Yuri Bashmet and premiered by Bashmet at his summer festival in Tours, France; String Quartets No. 4 and 5, written respectively for the Fine Arts and Amernet String Quartets; “Spirituals” for clarinet and string quartet, commissioned by Concertante Chamber Players for performances in 2000 at the Library of Congress and Merkin Hall (NYC) and in Harrisburg; a Clarinet Concerto for Jon Manasse, premiered by him with the National Philharmonic Orchestra under Maestro Piotr Gajewski, and “Fanfare for the Voice of A-M-E-R-I-C-A,” commissioned to celebrate VOA’s 60th anniversary, and premiered at the VOA auditorium on a 9/11 memorial concert in 2003. The Fanfare has since then been performed by the Wheeling Symphony, the Omaha Symphony, the University of Tennessee (Knoxville) Orchestra, and by the National Philharmonic Orchestra at the new Music Center at Strathmore as part of the 2005 ASOL convention.
 
Gerber’s music is well-known also in Russia and Ukraine, where he has had numerous tours with literally dozens of performances of his orchestral works as well as many concerts of his solo and chamber works. Several of his major works were given their world premieres there, including “Dirge and Awakening” by the Russian National Orchestra under Mikhail Pletnev at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, Violin Concerto by the Novosibirsk Philharmonic under Arnold Katz, with soloist Kurt Nikkanen, and Serenade Concertante by Chamber Orchestra Kremlin under Misha Rachlevsky at the Small Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. Gerber has written several works for famed Russian violinist Tatyana Grindenko.
 
In 2007 Arabesque released a CD of three of Gerber’s orchestral works, Spirituals for string orchestra, Clarinet Concerto, and Serenade Concertante, featuring the St. Petersburg State Academic Symphony, conducted by Vladimir Lande, and clarinetist Jon Manasse. In 2009 Naxos will release on its American Masters series a CD of nine solo and chamber works of Gerber, all featuring violinist Kurt Nikkanen, and including violinists Cho-Liang Lin and Cyrus Beroukhim, cellist Brinton Smith, and pianist Sara Davis Buechner.
 
Gerber recently completed a new orchestral work, “Music in Dark Times,” commissioned by Vladimir Ashkenazy. The four world premiere performances took place in March, 2009, with Maestro Ashkenazy conducting the San Francisco Symphony.
 
Steven Gerber official site