Armadillo String Quartet
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The Armadillo String Quartet is one of Los Angeles’s premier chamber music groups, offering concerts in various venues locally and in other parts of the world since its founding in 1980. They currently comprise Armen Ksajikian, Barry Socher, Ray Tischer and Steve Scharf.
Advocates for music old and new, the Armadillos have given numerous world première performances, including many works written for them, as well as concerts of older works, often in new contexts or settings. The versatile ensemble has played its varied repertoire in many established chamber music series in the Los Angeles area, including Monday Evening Concerts, the South Bay Chamber Music Society, Chamber Music in Historic Sites, Sundays at Four and the Pacific Composers’ Forum, and has been featured at several festivals in Southern California, such as the Santa Barbara Fall Music Festival, the Hindemith Festival in Northridge and the Los Angeles Bach Festival. They have performed in the 20th anniversary broadcast tribute to National Public Radio and in a recorded tribute to Kurt Weill, Lost in the Stars. They have produced their own concerts at various locations in the Los Angeles area which have included a 34½-hour marathon concert of the complete quartets of Joseph Haydn. Since 1991 they have presented annual concerts of the chamber music of Peter Schickele featuring the composer in performance with the quartet and as commentator on his works, which have included his String Quartet No. 4, "Inter-era Dance Suite", in its world premier performance in 1992.
The quartet has given numerous programs especially for young audiences including the series Children’s Concerts in Historic Sites and programs sponsored by Chamber Music America and the Pacific Composers Forum, one of which led to the start of a more comprehensive music program at the school in which they performed. They have played for many school children at Los Angeles Branch Libraries in concerts sponsored by the Library Foundation of Los Angeles and in May 2003 they performed a similar program at the Ojai Music Festival Family Concert.
In addition to concerts in traditional auditoriums the group has performed in private homes and in a variety of non-traditional concert sites, including Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House and galleries in the Southwest Museum, the Gene Autry Western Museum and the William S. Hart Museum. The most memorable of these unusual sites, however, have been the natural theaters along the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon and along other rivers in Oregon and Utah during special whitewater rafting trips. The Quartet traveled to Hong Kong in 1997 for a series of concerts and debuted at Carnegie Hall in December 1999, performing the World Premiere of the P. D. Q. Bach String Quartet, "The Moose".
