The Avalon String Quartet, based in Chicago, has extended its reach across the U.S. and beyond, with performances at major venues and festivals in Europe. The group, serving as quartet-in-residence at Northern Illinois University, has a varied résumé of educational accomplishments as well. Of the quartet's four members, only violist Anthony Devroye is American; violinist Blaise Magniere is French, violinist Marie Wang is Canadian, and cellist Cheng-Hou Lee is Taiwanese. The group came together at the Norfolk (Connecticut) Chamber Music Festival in 1995 and gained the attention of violinist Isaac Stern after participating in his chamber music workshop at Carnegie Hall two years later. That led to invitations to perform at Stern's Chamber Music Encounters series in Jerusalem and at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York. The Avalon String Quartet also had training from the Juilliard Quartet in New York, the Emerson Quartet at the Hartt School of Music in Hartford, Connecticut, and at Northern Illinois with the Vermeer Quartet, whom it succeeded as quartet-in-residence. The group won the top prize at Munich's ARD Competition in 2000. That year, it made its recording debut on the Channel Classics label with the album Dawn to Dusk. The group has performed at several New York venues, Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Wigmore Hall in London, and Munich's Herculessaal. Major festival appearances include those at the La Jolla Chamber Music Festival, the Bath International Music Festival, and the Aldeburgh Festival in Britain. Closer to home, the group has performed a regular concert series at the Art Institute of Chicago and has appeared at the summer Ravinia Festival in the city's suburbs. The Avalon has also recorded for Albany, Cedille, and Naxos, for which it issued an album of quartets by Matthew Quayle in 2018. In 2021, on Cedille, the group issued the album Leo Sowerby: The Paul Whiteman Commissions and Other Early Works, returning in 2024 on Naxos with an album of quartets by Sowerby and Florence Beatrice Price. ~ James Manheim, Rovi