Winner of the Alice Coleman Grand Prize at the 60th annual Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition in 2006, the internationally acclaimed Attacca Quartet has become one of America's premier young performing ensembles. Comprised of violinists Amy Schroeder and Keiko Tokunaga, violist Luke Fleming and cellist Andrew Yee, the Attacca Quartet was formed at The Juilliard School in 2003. They made their professional debut in 2007 as part of the Artists International Winners Series in Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall and have appeared there on numerous occasions since. John Adams’ recently composed String Quartet (2008) was performed by the Attacca in Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in December 2009; having worked closely on the piece at Banff, Adams has enthusiastically supported their performance of it. 2010 marked the beginning of “The 68,” an ambitious project in which the Attacca Quartet will perform all sixty-eight Haydn string quartets on a special series they created in New York.
The current resident quartet of the Northern Lights Music Festival for 2010-11, the Attacca Quartet also held an artist residency at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival in 2007, working closely with the Tokyo and Vermeer Quartets. They were one of three string quartets chosen worldwide to participate in the Pacific Music Festival's 2006 String Quartet Course in Sapporo, Japan. The Attacca Quartet performed in Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall as a part of the Juilliard Young Artists and Their Mentors Series, sharing a program with the Juilliard String Quartet. They further represented Juilliard in the Guarneri String Quartet's 40th Anniversary master class and on the Kennedy Center Conservatory Project concert series. Resident quartet at the 2005 Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, the Attacca Quartet has collaborated with pianists Jerome Lowenthal and Claude Frank, violinist Arnold Steinhardt, and the Tokyo String Quartet. They have also participated in the Emerson String Quartet's International String Quartet Seminar at Stony Brook University.
The Attacca Quartet has engaged in extensive educational and community outreach projects, serving as guest artists and teaching fellows at the 2006 Animato Summer Music Camp at Florida International University in Miami. They devoted a week in 2006 to outreach concerts for all ages in Hickory, North Carolina in a partnership with the Western Piedmont Symphony, and have participated in similar projects as featured ensemble with both the Amherst Symphony Orchestra in Buffalo, NY, and the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra’s Chamber Music Festival in South Carolina. In 2008, the Attacca Quartet taught and coached chamber music as resident string quartet at Hunter College in Manhattan, also teaching alongside the Tokyo String Quartet at the Port Townsend Chamber Music Festival in Port Townsend, Washington. In 2009, the quartet was string quartet-in-residence for the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. For the past four years they have also performed in numerous benefit concerts supporting the Michael J. Fox Foundation’s efforts to combat Parkinson’s disease.
The Attacca Quartet has also distinguished itself in seminars and master classes with members of the Juilliard, Emerson, Vermeer, Miró, Tokyo, and St. Lawrence string quartets and participated in the International Program for Advanced String Quartets at the Music@Menlo Festival in the summer of 2005. Comprised entirely of Juilliard graduates, the members of the Attacca Quartet currently reside in New York City. They consider among their mentors the members of the Juilliard, Tokyo, and St. Lawrence Quartets.
