Cuarteto Latinoamericano, string quartet

We invite you to attend the sixth and final concert for the 2022-2023 Concert Series for The Artist Series of Tallahassee, featuring Cuarteto Latinoamericano, string quartet at Opperman Hall. Also available as livestream and video on our website, www.theartistseries.org!

In their own words…
Individually, we are Saúl, Arón and Álvaro Bitrán, and Javier Montiel. Together, we are known as the Cuarteto Latinoamericano. Our audiences have lots of questions about us. For example, whether that big case that we carry with us is a guitarrón. No, it’s a cello. And we are not a mariachi band; we don’t play with ponchos or guitars, despite what many people ask. We know that our name may be a bit misleading, but there are reasons for it: not only do we hail from Latin America, but mainly, we have made an almost forty-year-long career by
mostly playing concert music by composers from countries south of the Rio Bravo. This music “the music of our continent” is as varied as its culture, its geography, its food and history. Some of these composers undoubtedly draw from Latin America’s rich popular music tradition, while others write music that sounds universal, and could have been written anywhere in the world. Having said that, it does seem that a lot of the Latin American repertoire prominently features rhythm (or so we are told.) But in any case, our only criterion for selecting our Latin American repertoire is its artistic quality.

Of course, like any budding string quartet, in the distant year of 1982 in Mexico City, we started with Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Borodin,
Ravel, etc. But soon thereafter we began to discover the wonderful repertoire awaiting us in our own neck of the woods and, in parallel, we
found out that it was very much appreciated in different parts of the world. This is how this music, which we have recorded on over 80 CDs, has gotten us many awards, such as two Latin Grammys, multiple Grammy nominations, and the coveted Diapason d’Or in France, among others and has brought us to renowned halls such as the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw and other marvelous concert venues in Israel, China, Japan, New Zealand, and practically all of Europe and the Americas.

Cuarteto Latinoamericano appears by arrangement with General Arts Touring, Inc.

Mary Sterner Lawson is sponsoring Cuarteto Latinoamericano in honor of her late brother, David W. Sterner, who loved classical music, Mexico, and Spanish literature and language.

To see program selections and more information, go to our Program flipbook, available here: https://www.theartistseries.org/?r3d=season-program-22-23