New for 2022 Denmark Arts Center’s Chamber Series. Denmark Arts Center will host four chamber performances this summer and to kick-off our new adventure is the wonderfully talented DaPonte String Quartet. 2022 marks the DaPonte String Quartet’s 31 year as a quartet—a rare feat in the world of classical music.

Not long after forming in Philadelphia, the Quartet surprised the musical world by moving to Maine where, as the New York Times noted, they create an experience “like watching the Celtics play in the local gym.”  The move was prompted by a temporary rural residency grant from Chamber Music America and the NEA and was unusual enough to earn them a feature on CBS Sunday Morning. Once they arrived in Maine, they forged an unbreakable love-bond with the state and decided to stay. They have been here for 22 years now.

The DSQ play over 50 events a year across the entire state, year-round, at schools, colleges, universities, historic buildings (such as opera houses), and churches.  They have a strong commitment to inspiring young musicians, by for example mentoring (at no charge) promising high-school-aged string quartets in intensive workshops at the Kennedy Learning Center in Nobleboro. They also conduct a quartet workshop for adults.

Although their main commitments are in Maine, the DSQ are sought after to perform and teach everywhere.  They have performed at Carnegie Hall; appeared in France, Scotland, Canada, and more than twenty American states; broadcast on nation-wide radio and television both in the United States and Canada; received awards from the NEA, Philadelphia Musical Fund Society, Music Teachers National Association, Chamber Music America, and Maine Arts Commission (which named them Fellows in Performing Arts for 2016); been profiled on national TV; and appeared on several of the nation’s most prestigious concert series.

Guest artists who have performed with them include Awadagin Pratt, Kate Aldrich, Gilbert Kalish, and Peter Serkin.

The DSQ repertoire spans the entire history of music, from 17th-century works on original instruments, to George Crumb on electric instruments, to cutting-edge contemporary quartets. They have commissioned work from such prominent composers as Richard Danielpour and Pulitzer Prize-winner David Del Tredici.  Strings Magazine recently noted the inclusion in the DSQ’s repertoire of the ingenious quartet Arcadiana by British composer Thomas Ades, when few groups find themselves able to invest the hundreds of hours’ preparation required for such complex music. Former New York Times music critic Allan Kozinn called their playing “consistently polished,” “thoughtful and rich hued” and filled with “sheer intensity” and “a searing incandescent energy.”