Athens, Ga. – The University of Georgia Performing Arts Center will present the Hermès String Quartet on Oct. 6 at 3 p.m. in Hodgson Hall. The performance is the 2013 Payne Memorial Concert, honoring William Jackson Payne, the former dean of Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and Chamber Music Series founder. Admission to the concert is free but tickets are required.
The members of the Hermès String Quartet met at the Lyon Conservatory in Paris and formed the ensemble in 2008. The quartet members are Omer Bouchez, violin; Elise Liu, violin; Yung-Hsin Chang, viola; and Anthony Kondo, cello.
The quartet has won top honors at prestigious competitions throughout Europe, starting with the 2009 Lyon International Musical Competition, followed by the 2010 European Chamber Music Competition and the 2011 Geneva International Music Competition. In 2012, the Hermès Quartet won First Prize at the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, which led to debuts in New York at Carnegie Hall and in Washington, D.C. at the Kennedy Center. The quartet embarks on its first U.S. tour this season.
The ensemble has also performed at numerous European festivals, including the Epau Festival, Les Musicades in Lyon, Le Festival de Radio France et Montpellier and the Lockenhaus Festival in Austria. The quartet is currently the Artist-in-Residence at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Brussels.
The Hermès Quartet’s Athens program will feature works by Claude Debussy, Henri Dutilleux, Franz Schubert and Giuseppi Verdi. The concert will be recorded for broadcast on American Public Media’s Performance Today, heard by over 1.3 million listeners across the country.
For further information, visit the Performing Arts Center online at pac.uga.edu or call the box office at 706-542-4400 or toll free at 888-289-8497.
Performance underwriters are the ARH Group – Merrill Lynch.
