Lafayette String Quartet
The award-winning Lafayette String Quartet has achieved renown as one of Canada’s leading ensembles, receiving critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. Audiences throughout North America and Europe applaud the group’s musical vitality, technical mastery and insightful interpretation of the classical to contemporary works. Artists-in-Residence a the University of Victoria School of Music in British Columbia since 1991, the Lafayette String Quartet has succeeded in building one of the strongest string departments in Canada.
In 1986, when they founded the quartet in Detroit, Michigan, Ann Elliott-Goldschmid, Sharon Stanis, Joanna Hood and Pamela Highbaugh Aloni had already been winning prizes. After winning the Cleveland String Quartet Competition at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, the quartet spent two years working with the members of the Cleveland Quartet while still teaching and living in Detroit, Michigan. In 1988, Musical America spotlighted them as one of the “Young Artists to Watch”. They went on to receive the grand prize at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition (South Bend, Indiana) and were top prizewinners in the Portsmouth International String Quartet Competition (England) and the Chicago Discovery Competition. They made their New York début (1990) at the Frick Collection and their Wigmore Hall début in 1994. Recently, these same four women brought audiences in Victoria and Waterloo, Ontario to their feet for their outstanding performances of the entire Beethoven String Quartets.
The Lafayette String Quartet teaches numerous workshops and master classes in Victoria and throughout Canada and the US. They have participated in Ottawa’s Strings of the Future, the Mozart Festival (Zeist, Holland), the Quartet Program (Lewisburg, Pa.) and the San Miguel de Allende Festival (Mexico).
The Lafayette has seven CDs (three on the Dorian label, two on the Adlar label and one on their own). In addition, the quartet has recently released a recording of Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” along with the String Quartet in E flat major by Fanny Mendelssohn and Rebecca Clarke’s “Poeme” for the CBC label.
