EAR Chamber Music Workshop with the Award-Winning Balourdet Quartet

About the Workshop

The 2025 EAR Chamber Music Workshop is an opportunity for avid string quartet lovers to enjoy a fully immersive, residential chamber music experience at the idyllic and bucolic Avaloch Farm Music Institute. In addition to hotel-level accommodations with meals catered by a Culinary Institute of America-trained chef, participants will have the opportunity to work in depth and play alongside Balourdet members on specific quartet piece (Haydn’s “Lark” Quartet), gain new insights into general ensemble rehearsal techniques, and engage in both formal and spontaneous sightreading opportunities. The EAR Musical Scholar will also provide pre-concert lectures to shed new observations on the quartet canon, and expound upon the linking thematic content of the Quartet’s nightly performances.

The Balourdet Quartet is acclaimed for their vibrant energy and masterful blend of technical precision and emotional depth that brings a fresh perspective to both beloved classics and modern compositions. Its unique closeness and willingness to take creative risks earned it the 2024 Avery Fisher Career Grant, as well as Chamber Music America’s 2024 Cleveland Quartet Award. With more than 70 concerts per season, recent highlights include the Balourdet’s debuts at Carnegie and Wigmore Halls, and new string quartets by composers Karim Al-Zand, Paul Novak, and Nicky Sohn through grants from Chamber Music America (2021) and the Barlow Foundation (2023). They are currently the Graduate Quartet in Residence at the prestigious Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University and are recent graduates of the New England Conservatory’s Professional String Quartet Program.

In 2021, the Quartet won the Grand Prize at New York’s Concert Artists Guild Competition, which included joint management by Concert Artists Guild in the U.S., and Young Classical Artist’s Trust (YCAT) in the UK and Europe. In addition, the Balourdet has been prizewinners in Canada’s Banff International String Quartet Competition, the International Premio Paolo Borciani Competition in Italy, Gold Medal winners at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, and Gold Medal and Audience Prizewinners at the Yellow Springs Competition.