Cuatro Puntos Resident Musicians
chamber ensemble
Cuatro Puntos is a multi faceted organization based in Hartford, Connecticut, USA dedicated to intercultural dialogue and universal access through the performance, writing, and teaching of music. Cuatro Puntos oversees a resident chamber music ensemble, a concert series, arts-integration workshops in local schools, the Music Moves Hartford program for those facing homelessness, and a partnership with the Müzikhane Social Music School in Southeastern Turkey. The Cuatro Puntos Resident Musicians, hailed by Fanfare Magazine as having a “great depth of sound” and “virtuosic performance”, have performed extensively throughout the United States as well as in Bolivia, Brazil, England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Afghanistan. They have produced or been collaborators on a number of albums spanning many genres, including a recent release of Centennial Cole with Connecticut-based R&B singer Orice Jenkins.
A four-year collaboration with Afghanistan’s only music school, which included several teaching artist visits to Afghanistan and a one-year teaching tenure by Cuatro Puntos’ executive director, resulted in a collaborative album between Cuatro Puntos and the Afghanistan National Institute of Music titled The Rosegarden of Light. The album is released on Toccata Classics and has received critical acclaim worldwide as well as airplay on major stations such as BBC and NPR. Music from the album has also been used on the score of several films, most recently in The Staging Post and Laila at the Bridge. Blackmore Vale Magazine in the UK said “At a time when we are bombarded every day by images of the world in crisis, The Rosegarden of Light is a joyful celebration of musicians who share a fundamental right to express themselves through the universal language of music.”
The Cuatro Puntos Resident Musicians are just one arm of a multi-faceted organization aimed at using the power of music for social change.
The Resident Musicians’ personnel for their Metier album ‘Jaipur to Cairo’ are Aaron Packard (violin); Annie Trépanier (violin); Kevin Bishop (viola and zerbaghali); Steve Larson (viola); Allan ballinger (cello); Andrew O’Connor (contrabass); Charles Huang (oboe); Mohamed Shams (piano). Photo shows the string quintet.
