Wharton Music Center Presents the Lark Quartet Featuring Pianist Lenore Davis

Wharton Music Center presents the Lark Quartet featuring pianist Lenore Davis on Saturday, December 7 at 8:00 p.m. at its performance hall located at 60 Locust Avenue in Berkeley Heights. The concert is open to the public. Tickets can be purchased by calling 908 790-0700 or at the door for $25 adults and $20 students 16 and under and seniors.

The quartet will perform Haydn's "Lark" Quartet and Webern bagatelles. Ms. Davis will join the quartet and perform Brahms's magnificent Piano Quintet. As a special treat, New Jersey Youth Symphony String Quartet will perform Ravel’s Quartet in F Major.

Since its inception in 1985, the Lark Quartet has performed in many of the world’s great concert halls including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Library of Congress. The Lark has a distinguished tradition of working closely with the country’s most celebrated composers and commissioning new works, many of which have become mainstays of the chamber music repertoire. Such works include Quartet no. 1 Musica celestis and Quartet no. 2 Musica instrumentalis (winning the 1997 Pulitzer Prize) by Aaron Jay Kernis; Piano Quintet by Paul Moravec for Lark and Jeremy Denk; Quartet no. 2 In Memoriam and Piano Quintet no. 2, by Peter Schickele; Intarsio by Glen Velez; and Big Time by Nico Muhly.

With a discography comprising more than a dozen CDs, the Lark Quartet has recorded for the Decca/Argo, Arabesque, Bridge, ERI, Endeavor, Koch, Point, and New World labels. Members of the Lark Quartet are Deborah Buck and Basia Danilow, violins; Kathryn Lockwood, viola; and Caroline Stinson, cello.

Lenore Fishman Davis is known for innovative programming, exceptional musicianship, and ease of rapport with audience members. A student of Menahem Pressler, she went on to present several chamber music series programs and has collaborated with great artists such as the Brentano String Quartet, David Krakauer, Richard Goode, Bruce Adolphe, Michael Kelly, Judy Kang, Matt Haimovitz, the St. Lawrence String Quartet, and Richard Stoltzman.

A graduate of Juilliard’s Pre-college Division and of Indiana University, Ms. Davis continued her studies in Banff and in Israel where she worked intensively with Ramy Shevelov. She toured Israel as a member of the Zichron Trio and was the founder and director of Arbor Chamber Music, New Jersey’s premier chamber music series from 1992-2006.

New Jersey Youth Symphony String Quartet is the chamber music program’s foremost string quartet. Its members include Alex Wang and Yuji Sugimoto, violins; Johanna Nowik, viola; and Cecelia Sha, cello.

Wharton Music Center, located at 60 Locust Avenue in Berkeley Heights, provides music, theatre, and dance instruction, educational programs, and performances for children, teens, and adults. In addition to instruction in all instruments and voice, WMC offers classes in musical theatre, dance, drama, choral music, vocal music, music theory, audio recording, early childhood music, and music for children with special needs. Offering a range of musical genres including classical, rock,jazz, and blues, WMC is one of New Jersey’s largest independent non-profit community performing arts center serving students in Union, Morris, Essex, Somerset, and other surrounding counties.

WMC offers orchestral and ensemble music education for grades 3 through 12 through New Jersey Youth Symphony (NJYS) located at 570 Central Avenue in New Providence. NJYS, one of them foremost youth orchestras in the state, has eleven orchestras and ensembles for which auditions are held annually. NJYS’s premiere orchestra, Youth Symphony, has performed in internationally renowned concert halls such as Carnegie Hall in New York City and Musikverein in Vienna.

The mission of Wharton Music Center, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, is to advance excellence and education in the performing arts. For more nformation, visitwww.WhartonMusicCenter.org or www.NJYS.org