Timothy Ying, violin  
Janet Ying, violin
Phillip Ying, viola    
David Ying, cello

Now in its second decade, the Ying Quartet continues to develop ways of making artistic and creative expression an essential part of everyday life. Their journey continues, with their innovative visiting residency at Symphony Space in New York City connecting music with other art forms; their continuing exploration with the Turtle Island String Quartet of jazz, improvisation and the classical string quartet tradition; a program with folk musician Mike Seeger showing the influence of traditional folk music on contemporary classical composition; and Tod Machover's Hyperscore, a revolutionary online graphic compositional application that allows amateurs to compose on the computer.

The 2005-06 season unveiled with a heavy touring and residency schedule that brought the Quartet to SymphonySpace (New York), Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C.), Harvard University, Kalamazoo, Seattle, Portland, Stanford, as well as other cities in California , Missouri and Pennsylvania . The winter/spring highlights include multiple performances at SymphonySpace as part of their fifth and final year of residency; return appearances at Harvard University and tour dates nationwide. Always an advocate for multi-disciplinary projects, the Ying Quartet this season continues collaboration with Turtle Island String Quartet, folk artist Mike Seeger and Todd Machover, a composer, Hyperscore designer and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor. The sophomore CD of their acclaimed LifeMusic project is slated for release in January 2006 by Quartz Records.

The 2004-05 season celebrated the release of their first all-Ying CD, which contains the premiere recordings of four quartets written for the Ying Quartet through the innovative LifeMusic project, a long-term commissioning program dedicated to creating string quartets by American composers on American themes. The disk, on England 's Quartz Music label, is the first in a projected series of the LifeMusic commissions. In addition, a recording of the Ying and Turtle Island Quartets, 4+Four , was released in the spring of 2005 on the Telarc label.

The past season also saw the Quartet's collaboration with the Turtle Island String Quartet in New York . In January, they performed (at SymphonySpace) a concert as part of the 2005 Chamber Music America Conference. They also participate d in the annual SymphonySpace Wall-to-Wall Marathon (2005 focus: Sondheim) and Selected Shorts, the nationally broadcast ed radio program of literary readings. Other highlights of the 04-05 season included two appearances at New York 's Miller Theater, one playing piano quintets with Christopher Taylor, and the other playing string octets and Reich's Triple Quartet, with the Pacifica and Chiara Quartets. Touring included appearances with Turtle Island and the St. Lawrence Quartet. In addition, their Harvard University residency, in its fourth season and extended through 2008, again saw the quartet making four week-long visits combining coaching and recitals.

Their Symphony Space programs have been highlights of recent seasons. In April 2002 they helped inaugurate the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater with a three-concert series linking music with poetry. Their equally creative 2003 series included the New York premiere of a quartet written for them by Ned Rorem, who celebrated his 80 th birthday in 2003, as well as performances involving dance, video, and even chinese noodle-making. Last season's performances included collaborations with a folk singer and a magician.

With "Musical Dim Sum," the Yings continue to extend their repertoire of innovative programming concepts while celebrating their own cultural heritage. On these programs, the Quartet includes a selection of short works by Chinese American composers in the framework of a traditional concert, giving audiences the treat of a diverse sampling of this music. The Quartet plans to commission new works by composers of Chinese background living around the globe to join existing pieces by Chou Wen-Chung, Zhou Long, Tan Dun, Bright Sheng, and Chen Yi. The Quartet's other repertoire includes works by Adler, Rouse, Gardner , Hodkinson, Shapey, Silver, Primosch, Beal, and Diamond, among others. In 1999, the Ying introduced a multi-year commissioning project, supported by the Institute for American Music and called LifeMusic, designed to produce a distinctively American string quartet repertoire. A pair of works each season, by established and emerging composers, is commissioned and used in the Yings' diverse performance activities. The series began with quartets by Kevin Puts ( Dark Vigil ) and Michael Torke ( Corner in Manhattan ), and now includes pieces by Carter Pann ( Love Letters ) and Paquito D'Rivera ( The Village Street Quartet ). Recent premieres include Daniel Kellogg's Three American Hymns for String Quartet and Augusta Read Thomas' Eagle at Sunrise ; Chen Yi's At the Kansas City Chinese New Year Concert for string quartet, and Ned Rorem's The United States--Seven Viewpoints ; Bernard Rands Quartet No. 3 , Jennifer Higdon Southern Harmony and John Duffy Mark Twain Suite . Additional pieces have been commissioned from Pierre Jalbert .

Natives of Chicago, the Ying siblings began their career as an ensemble in 1992 in the farm town of Jesup , Iowa (population 2000) as the first recipients of a National Endowment for the Arts grant to support chamber music in rural America . The Quartet participated fully in the community, performing on countless occasions for audiences of six to six hundred people in a residency so successful that it was widely chronicled in both the national and international media, including feature articles in the New York Times and STRAD Magazine and coverage on CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt .

While the Quartet was in Jesup, its exceptional musical qualities earned it the 1993 Naumburg Chamber Music Award. In the years since, the Yings have established an international reputation for excellence in performance with appearances in virtually every major American city; at numerous festivals including Tanglewood, Aspen and San Miguel; and in Europe , Canada , Mexico , Australia , Japan and Taiwan . The Yings' enthusiasm for performing in diverse settings has led to concerts in Carnegie Hall, the White House, hospitals and juvenile prisons. Frequent musical collaborators have included such artists as Menahem Pressler, Paul Katz, Gilbert Kalish and Jon Nakamatsu and the St. Lawrence Quartet.

As Quartet-in-Residence at the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester , the Ying Quartet planned and directs a rigorous, sequential chamber music curriculum that integrates intensive musical instruction with training in creative presentation and communication skills, and includes practical performance opportunities throughout the greater Rochester community. The Quartet has also taught at Northwestern University and at the Interlochen, Brevard and Bowdoin Music Festivals.

(December 2005)