Front Row Washington

The Abeo Quartet, silver medal winner of the 2019 Fischoff International Chamber Music Competition, has been featured in New York at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Alice Tully Hall and on WQXR’s Midday Masterpieces. The quartet also won the Judges Special Recognition Award at the 2019 Plowman Chamber Music Competition. Abeo, formed at Juilliard, has recently performed at the Kennedy Center’s Reach Festival, The Glenstone Museum in Potomac and in Norway’s Vertavo Festival, playing seven works by Haydn.

The quartet won a Montreal International String Quartet Academy fellowship, studying with members of the Alban Berg Quartet, Quatuor Ebene, Takács String Quartet and the Artemis Quartet. Abeo also has had coachings with pianist Joseph Kalichstein and the Calidore String Quartet. Formed in 2018 at the Juilliard School, the Abeo Quartet has studied under the tutelage of Joseph Lin and Astrid Schween as part of the Juillard Honors Chamber Music Program.

When they were first year Juilliard students, Ludvig, Njioma, James, and Drew immediately recognized and discovered their natural chemistry as well as each other’s passion for chamber music when they began sight reading together. The quartet chose the name Abeo / ah - bey - oh / , representing an expression of joy in a Nigerian dialect, to reflect their love for playing chamber music and sharing it with others.

This concert features a world premiere by local composer Alistair Coleman called Moonshot and was commissioned by Glenstone (a museum in Potomac, Maryland). The inspiration comes from a date painting triptych by On Kawara that outlines the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969.