Cypress String Quartet


The Cypress String Quartet was a professional classical chamber music ensemble founded in San Francisco, California, in 1996. At the time of its disbanding in June 2016, the quartet's members were:
  • Cecily Ward, violin
  • Tom Stone, violin
  • Ethan Filner, viola
  • Jennifer Kloetzel, cello
The quartet maintained a busy performing, recording, teaching, and touring schedule, traveling approximately 100 days each year throughout much of the United States and internationally with occasional concert tours in Mexico, Canada, England, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Japan. The Cypress was Quartet-in-Residence at San Jose State University from 2003 to 2009.
WWW Official Site

Recordings

Commercial recordings include:
  • .
Other recordings released by the Cypress Quartet include:
  • - featuring 2003 Call & Response/Cypress String Quartet commission "Impressions"
  • Jay Cloidt - featuring "eleven windows" and "Spectral Evidence" for String Quartet
  • - featuring String Quartet No.1 by 2004 Call & Response composer Jeffery Cotton
  • - featuring music by 2007 Call & Response composer Daniel Asia
  • - featuring "Five Pieces for String Quartet" by the German composer Ervin Schulhoff whose music was lost and/or shunned for decades following his death in a Nazi concentration camp in World War II—by the East because of his so-called "degenerate" harmonies and by the West because of his ardent communism. Currently Out of Print.
  • "Call & Response 2000 - Live" - featuring a live concert recording of the inaugural Call & Response program including "quartetto ricercare" by Dan Coleman. Currently Out of Print.

Call and Response

"Call & Response" is an annual commissioning and audience development program created by the Cypress Quartet as a method of demonstrating to contemporary audiences the ongoing process of inspiration, and to help make clear the relevance of older music to today's culture and society. The 2010 Call & Response program saw the World Premiere of Elena Ruehr's "Bel Canto" string quartet based on the novel of the same name by Ann Patchett. With the theme of the 2010 Call & Response program "Lyrical Music Inspired by Literature," Dr. Ruehr's new work was paired with Mozart's String Quartet in D Major K.575 "The Violet" and Schubert's String Quartet in D Minor D.810 "Death & The Maiden." The 2010 concert took place at Herbst Theatre in San Francisco's Civic Center district