Kuss Quartet in its San Francisco Debut April 15, 2010

San Francisco Performances is pleased to present the San Francisco debut of the cutting-edge, Berlin-based Kuss Quartet.

The program will be Haydn's "Quartet in C Major, Opus 54, No. 2"; Berg's "Quartet, Opus 3"; and Beethoven's "Quartet in F Major, Opus 135."
The members of the Kuss Quartet-violinists Jana Kuss and Oliver Wille, violist William Coleman and cellist Mikayel Hakhnazaryan-actively reach beyond the typical chamber-music audience, drawing in new listeners with innovative programming.

Their ongoing series "Explica," staged at Hamburg's prestigious Laeiszhalle, combines performance with commentary. In cooperation with Kulturradio (run by Berlin's regional broadcaster RBB), the Kuss regularly appears in the Watergate nightclub in the city's hip Kreuzberg area, performing Ligeti and Lachenmann for enthusiastic young audiences before handing the event over to the evening's deejay. Other initiatives combine musical and literary art forms.

The breadth of the Quartet's repertoire is exemplified in the Sony BMG release Bridges, which, creating connections across the centuries, juxtaposes transcriptions of Renaissance composers (Lassus, Bennet, Dowland) with works by Ades, Kurtag and Stravinsky.

Over the 2009-10 season, the Kuss Quartet's colleagues in performance have included Miklos Perenyi, Kirill Gerstein and Pierre-Laurent Aimard, while 2010 brings a focus on the works of Schumann in honor of the composer's 200th anniversary.

Official Website: http://www.performances.org