Verona Quartet with tenor Ben Bliss – October 29, 2026

The Verona Quartet is recognized as a premier ensemble of its generation, praised by The New York Times as an “outstanding ensemble… cohesive yet full of temperament.” Recipients of the 2020 Chamber Music America Cleveland Quartet Award and the Fischoff National Chamber Music Association’s 2025 Educator Award, the ensemble has earned a reputation for its “bold interpretive strength” (Calgary Herald) and “opulent sonority” (The Strad). The Quartet serves on the faculty of Oberlin College and Conservatory as Quartet-in-Residence and as Artistic Directors of the Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance. The ensemble’s rise to international prominence was fueled by a swift succession of top prize wins at Wigmore Hall, Melbourne, Osaka, M-Prize, and Fischoff International Chamber Music Competitions, as well as the 2015 Concert Artists Guild Competition.

A string quartet for the 21st century, the Verona Quartet pairs versatile programming with imaginative collaborations that bridge the time-honored canon and new, interdisciplinary works. Notable commissions and premieres include works by composers Christopher Theofanidis, Julia Adolphe, Texu Kim, and Sebastian Currier, as well as Michael Gilbertson’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated Quartet. The Quartet recently celebrated several world premieres, including a work for string quartet, yangqin (Chinese dulcimer), and dancer by Cheng Jin Koh, commissioned by The Smithsonian Institution in honor of the centennial of the Freer Gallery of Art. The 2025 season marks the launch of a new project with American tenor Ben Bliss, featuring the American Songbook alongside art song literature. Past ventures highlight the group’s versatility, ranging from live-performance art installations with artist Ana Prvački to collaborations with the GRAMMY-winning folk trio I’m With Her.

Mr. Bliss was most recently praised as “a peer of the best Toms in the opera’s seven-decade history” (Voix des Arts) in The Rake’s Progress at the Metropolitan Opera. The 2026–27 season sees him at the Berlin Staatsoper Unter den Linden as the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto, returning to the Bayerische Staatsoper Munich as Alfredo in La Traviata, and at the Metropolitan Opera as Nikolaus Sprink in Kevin Puts’s Silent Night. He also makes his role debut as Tamino in Die Zauberflöte at the Gran Teatre del Liceu Barcelona, joins the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood for Beethoven’s Ninth, and gives recitals at the Park Avenue Armory and Cal Performances.