Bio
Ensemble Profile
Bio
Ensemble Profile
The Assembly Quartet is a professional chamber music ensemble whose mission is to promote music education and expand the enjoyment of music for people of all ages. Originally formed in 2003 by graduate students at the University of South Carolina, the Quartet’s principal objective was, and remains, to engage with audiences in public schools and communities, working with students and audiences that often have limited experience with chamber music or with the music of our time.
Assembly has completed week-long residencies in North Dakota, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Michigan, and Texas performing and teaching in area schools and offering evening recitals; additionally, the group has been featured in performances with the Minot Symphony Orchestra, the Aiken Concert Band, the Motor City Symphony Orchestra, the Oakland Symphony Orchestra (MI), and the University of Mississippi Symphony Orchestra. The Assembly Quartet was the inaugural performer in Conundrum Theater’s “Not So Classical” new music series in Columbia, SC and as a part of the Spartanburg Symphony Orchestra’s Chamber Music Series. In past years, Assembly has been featured in the Columbia Museum of Art’s French Impressionist Art/Music Collaboration, on South Carolina public radio, and regularly at meetings of the North American Saxophone Alliance, the International Saxophone Symposium, and the World Saxophone Congress.
Committed to furthering the saxophone quartet repertoire, this ensemble has commissioned and premiered works by Marilyn Shrude, Carlos Simon, Grace Baugher Dunlap, Andrew David Perkins, Om Srivastava, Ryan Todd, Martin Bresnick, Bill Ryan, Misha Zupko, Franco Donatoni, Frank Wiley, Marc Mellits, Kurt Isaacson, David Maslanka, Simon Fink, Benjamin Taylor, Girard Kratz, Sophocleous Charalambos and Peter Kay. The Assembly Quartet is a versatile ensemble, comfortable performing a wide variety of styles from orchestral pops to virtuosic avant-garde.