Chiara Quartet returns to Grand Forks The Chiara String Quartet (Rebecca Fischer and Julie Yoon, violin; Jonah Sirota, viola; Gregory Beaver, cello) return to Grand Forks Aug. 7-14 as performers and artists-in-residence at the Red River Chamber Music Festival. This annual event, now in its third year, includes intensive coaching in chamber music for 16 advanced strings musicians, as well as public chamber music performances in different locations throughout the city. The festival is sponsored by the Greater Grand Forks Symphony with major support from the North Dakota Eye Clinic. This year’s public performances include a concert by the Chiara Quartet at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 7, at the Evangelical Free Church, 2315 Library Circle; a faculty concert with Eric Lawson, Chiara Quartet, and other local musicians at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 11, at the Hughes Fine Arts Center; and a recital by festival students at 2 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 12, at the North Dakota Museum of Art. Tickets for all events may be ordered in advance from the symphony office by calling 777-3359, or may be purchased at the door beginning one hour before performance time. The Chiara Quartet has been praised for a range that encompasses “glowing warmth to hard-edged acerbity” (The New York Times), and for possessing a “potent collective force” (Strings Magazine). The quartet was recently named the Blodgett Artists-in-Residence at Harvard University, a post they will begin in the fall of 2008, in addition to their ongoing artist residency at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Recently awarded the Guarneri Quartet Residency Award for artistic excellence by Chamber Music America, the quartet’s other honors include a top prize at the Paolo Borciani International Competition, winning the Astral Artistic Services National Audition, and winning first prize at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. Quartet members have become well known to Grand Forks audiences since completing a two-year residency with the Greater Grand Forks Symphony between 2000 and 2002. In the summer of 2005, the quartet and symphony founded the Red River Chamber Music Festival as an annual event to support and develop chamber music audiences and musicians in the Red River Valley. -- Jennifer Tarlin, Executive Director, Greater Grand Forks Symphony, ggfso@und.edu, 7-3359