Valerie Li, violin; Yuri Cho, violin; David Samuel, viola; Adrian Fung, cello

The all-Canadian Afiara String Quartet offers performances of “startling intensity” with a “powerful, keen-edged collective sound” (San Francisco Classical Voice). Winner of the Concert Artists Guild International Competition, the Young Canadian Musicians Award, top prizes at the Munich ARD International Music Competition and the Banff International String Quartet Competition, where they also took the Szekely Prize for the best performance of Beethoven, the Afiara balances a lively interest in new works with deep insight into core classical repertoire.

In the 2010/11 season, the Afiara String Quartet performs throughout North America and internationally, with dates in New York City at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Concert Hall and for the Americas Society; at the Kennedy Center for both the Mendelssohn Octet with the Juilliard String Quartet and then presented in concert by the Washington Performing Arts Society; at Las Cruces Concerts in New Mexico; Vancouver’s Music in the Morning; in São Paulo, Brazil; at the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam; throughout Denmark and elsewhere. They make a studio recording at the Bayerischer Rundfunk in Munich, and return to the Glenn Gould School at Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music as Visiting-Quartet-in-Residence.