Del Sol String Quartet
Fascinated by the feedback loop between social change, technology, and artistic innovation, the San Francisco-based Del Sol Quartet is a leading force in 21st-century chamber music. They believe that live music can, and should, happen anywhere – whether introducing Ben Johnston’s microtonal Americana at the Library of Congress or in a canyon cave, taking Aeryn Santillan’s gun-violence memorial to the streets of the Mission District, or collaborating with Huang Ruo and the anonymous Chinese poets who carved their words into the walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station.
Since 1992, Del Sol has commissioned or premiered thousands of works by composers including Terry Riley, Gabriela Lena Frank, Tania León, Frederic Rzewski, Vijay Iyer, Mason Bates, Michael Harrison, Huang Ruo, Pamela Z, Chinary Ung, Chen Yi, Erberk Eryilmaz, Theresa Wong, Reza Vali, and Kui Dong. The quartet regularly works with composers through workshops, universities, as well as Del Sol commissioning and incubator programs. They especially value their ongoing relationship with the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music in Boonville, CA.
Del Sol’s eleventh album "A Dust in Time" debuted at #3 on Billboard in October 2021. Called “excavations of beauty from the elemental” (NY Times), this hour-long meditation was released in the form of a coloring book. Their previous album “Kooch-e Khamân” (February 2021) features 7 new works by young Iranian composers and charted #5 on Billboard. In the 2021-2022 seasons, Del Sol continues its Joy Project, performing outdoor pop-ups around the Bay Area of music written to inspire joy. They also are producing two large projects: “The Angel Island Project,” an immigration-themed oratorio by Chinese American composer Huang Ruo, and “Between Worlds of Sound,” a collaboration with North Indian musicians Alam Khan & Arjun Verma. As part of the Venice Biennale, the quartet are featured artists at the Arts Letter and Numbers Pavilion.
Visiting artists, Creative Music Online 2021, Creative Music Intensive Summer 2022
