San Francisco Performances presents an unparalleled series of concerts featuring the Attacca Quartet, a visionary ensemble adept at bridging classical and contemporary music. Across three concerts, the Quartet collaborates with luminaries like Theo Bleckmann and Caroline Shaw, exploring diverse musical genres from traditional string quartets to avant-garde compositions. This series spotlights the Quartet's innovation and versatility, promising audiences a unique auditory journey.

Attacca Quartet Series: Redefining Chamber Music with Modern Collaborations

Embark on a sonic journey with the Attacca Quartet as they redefine classical music in a trilogy of concerts presented by San Francisco Performances. With their innovative blend of classical and contemporary styles, the two-time Grammy® Award-winning ensemble will captivate audiences alongside renowned artists Theo Bleckmann and Caroline Shaw. Dive into this groundbreaking series that explores timeless works by Haydn, Bartók, Beethoven, and more, as well as modern compositions, offering a fresh perspective on chamber music.

Attacca Quartet's Triumphant Trilogy: A Modern Chamber Music Odyssey

San Francisco became the epicenter of musical innovation with the Attacca Quartet's captivating series of concerts. Spanning three events from October 2025 to April 2026, the Grammy® Award-winning ensemble mesmerized audiences with their seamless blend of classical and contemporary music. From the stirring compositions of Haydn and Bartók to collaborations with Theo Bleckmann and Caroline Shaw, each performance highlighted the Quartet's versatility and artistic prowess. Join us as we delve into these extraordinary events that pushed the boundaries of traditional chamber music.

Attacca Quartet in San Francisco: A Fusion of Tradition and Innovation

The Grammy Award–winning Attacca Quartet performs an extraordinary program that features music by 2024–2025 Debs Composer’s Chair Gabriela Ortiz, one of the world’s leading composers today. It includes the world premiere of a string quartet composed for the Attacca (co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall), as well as Ortiz’s acclaimed, four-movement celebration of Mexico’s Day of the Dead festivities: Altar de muertos, originally commissioned by Kronos Quartet—whose cellist, Paul Wiancko, composed the final piece of the program. “If Haydn were alive to write a string quartet today, it may sound something like Paul Wiancko’s LIFT” (NPR).

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Attacca Quartet

Carnegie Hall

The two-time Grammy-award winning Attacca Quartet performs Caroline Shaw’s Valencia, plus pieces from their genre-busting 2021 album Of All Joys, a powerful musical journey that folds late 20th-century minimalism back onto the music of the Renaissance. ​Attacca Quartet “lives in the present aesthetically, without rejecting the virtues of the musical past” (The Nation), and are recognized and acclaimed as one of the most versatile and outstanding ensembles of the moment — a true quartet for modern times. Gliding through traditional classical repertoire to electronica, video game music and contemporary collaborations, they are one of the world’s most innovative and respected ensembles. With students from Kaufman Music Center’s Special Music School and the John J. Cali School of Music.

Kaufman Music Center

In the 20 years since its founding as a student ensemble at the Juilliard School, the two-time Grammy-winning Attacca Quartet has been at the vanguard of a new generation of American ensembles making their own rules about what contemporary chamber music can be. Gleefully gliding between the music of the 18th to the 21st century, Attacca’s recent recording projects have included a minimalist/Renaissance mashup featuring works by Philip Glass, Arvo Pärt, and Renaissance composers like John Dowland and Orlando Gibbons; an award-winning collaboration with composer Caroline Shaw; and most recently, a collection of strings-and-electronics arrangements produced by Michael League of the jazz-fusion band Snarky Puppy. Attacca spins out works from these efforts and others as part of its “playlist” program, modeled after music streaming service playlists. Beethoven’s ravishing late-period Op. 131 quartet serves as a counterweight to what promises to be an engagingly eclectic program. “[Attacca] lives in the present aesthetically, without rejecting the virtues of the musical past” (The Nation).

University of California, Berkeley

For the ninth year of PIVOT, guest curator Gabriel Kahane and friends dig deep into music that asks enduring and enlightening questions about our ever-changing world and seeks the uplift of answers rooted in shared experience. Gabriel Kahane is a musician and storyteller whose work exists at the intersection of art and social practice, and “his music is suffused with idiosyncratic, enriched tonal harmony…he is one of the finest, most searching songwriters of the day” (The New Yorker). “We’re living in a golden age of string quartets…It’s hard to disagree when you hear the vibrant young players in New York’s Attacca Quartet” (NPR). Grammy-winning vocal band Roomful of Teeth can seemingly make anything cool, “From death metal to throat singing to alpine yodeling, the experimental group is changing what it means to harmonize” (The New Yorker).

Gabriel Kahane | Attacca Quartet Roomful of Teeth

War Memorial and Performing Arts Center

For the ninth year of PIVOT, guest curator Gabriel Kahane and friends dig deep into music that asks enduring and enlightening questions about our ever-changing world and seeks the uplift of answers rooted in shared experience. Gabriel Kahane is a musician and storyteller whose work exists at the intersection of art and social practice, and “his music is suffused with idiosyncratic, enriched tonal harmony…he is one of the finest, most searching songwriters of the day” (The New Yorker). “We’re living in a golden age of string quartets…It’s hard to disagree when you hear the vibrant young players in New York’s Attacca Quartet” (NPR).

Gabriel Kahane | Attacca Quartet

A visionary collaboration that has already yielded two Grammy Awards re-unites on the Chamber Music Detroit stage to launch our groundbreaking 80th Season. This close musical partnership between one of the world’s most exciting string quartets and an extraordinarily creative composer – the youngest ever to receive a Pulitzer Prize – offers music that is fresh, moving, and exquisitely beautiful.

Opening Night: Attacca Quartet & Caroline Shaw

Detroit Country Day School - Upper School

Featuring compositions by Hawa Kassé Mady Diabaté, Philip Glass, Zakir Hussain, Susie Ibarra, Aleksander Kościów, Sky Macklay, Angélica Negrón, Peni Candra Rini, Charlton Singleton, Stephan Thelen.

The final program of this year’s Festival completes the survey of the eclectic Kronos Fifty for the Future repertoire with works by composers from India, Indonesia, Mali, Poland, Switzerland, and the United States (including Puerto Rico).

Kronos takes the stage and also welcomes two exceptional guest ensembles: New York’s Grammy-winning Attacca Quartet and, making their third appearance in this festival, SF’s own innovative Friction Quartet.

Kronos Festival - Program 3 (2023)

SFJAZZ Center

Aaron Copland’s heartfelt portrayal of a day in the life of a newly married pioneer couple lies at the heart of a program bursting with lush lyricism. The Pulitzer Prize-winning score to Martha Graham’s ballet Appalachian Spring will be heard in its original 13-instrument version. New SMF faculty oboist Marion Kuszyk, Associate Principal Oboe of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, joins faculty hornist Michelle Reed Baker and six fellows in Mozart’s delightfully contrasting serenade for wind octet. The program concludes with one of the crown jewels of the chamber music repertoire—Brahms’ Piano Quintet in F Minor. The Attacca Quartet and SMF Music Director Jeffrey Kahane collaborate on this passionate work.

Appalachian Spring

Sarasota Opera House

Stories of dedication and perseverance set a “gold standard” in this chamber showcase. Sato Matsui’s Goldenrod pays tribute to beloved SMF flutist Carol Wincenc’s “Golden Jubilee,” celebrating the anniversary of her remarkable 50-year career. Written in 1946, Polish composer Mieczysław Weinberg’s Sonatina for Violin and Piano possesses a tenderness that belies the adversity he faced during his life. The GRAMMY Award-winning Attacca Quartet makes its Festival debut with two acclaimed works. Composer Caroline Shaw, the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music, drew creative sparks for her First Essay (Nimrod) from human language, in particular, the lilting rhythms of Marilynne Robinson’s prose. Maurice Ravel’s ravishing String Quartet ends the program on a brilliant and lyrical note.

Gold Standard

Beatrice Friedman Symphony Center

A musical summit and jam session featuring solos and collaborations among the bowed and plucked string instruments from cultures in the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

Finale: Strings Attached

Libbey Bowl

Curated by Francesco Turrisi, a program of morning music spanning from ancient pipa music to works of Dowland and Monteverdi.

Early Music

A new staging of Tan Dun’s Ghost Opera for pipa and string quartet evokes the spirits of Bach and Shakespeare, standing with the ancient folk traditions of traditional shamanistic Chinese music.

Ghost Opera

Ojai Valley School

The Festival opens with Gabriela Ortiz’s Liquid Borders performed by red fish blue fish conducted by Steven Schick. The second half welcomes back the Attacca Quartet performing a curated playlist made especially for Ojai audiences.

Liquid Borders

The vibrant young players of Attacca Quartet perform pieces from Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw’s Orange, which earned Attacca Quartet a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance.

Grammy Award-winning Attacca Quartet, as described by The Nation, “lives in the present aesthetically, without rejecting the virtues of the musical past,” and it is this dexterity to glide between the music of the 18th through to 21st century living composer’s repertoire that has placed them as one of the most versatile and outstanding ensembles of the moment—a quartet for modern times. Accolades include First Prize at the 7th Osaka International Chamber Music Competition, the Top Prize and Listeners’ Choice award winners for the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition, and Grand Prize Winners of the 60th annual Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition.

Segerstrom Center for the Arts

The first in a series of three concerts featuring the two-time Grammy® Award-winning Attacca Quartet, a true quartet for modern times. Gliding through traditional classical repertoire to electronica, video game music, and a who’s who of contemporary collaborations, they are one of the world’s most innovative and respected ensembles.

Attacca Quartet (Contemporary Chamber/Herbst)

The second in a series of three concerts featuring the two-time Grammy® Award-winning Attacca Quartet, a true quartet for modern times. Gliding through traditional classical repertoire to electronica, video game music, and a who’s who of contemporary collaborations, they are one of the world’s most innovative and respected ensembles.

The Quartet pairs up with highly acclaimed multi-Grammy® nominated vocalist Theo Bleckmann for this performance.

Attacca Quartet and Theo Bleckmann

The third in a series of three concerts featuring the two-time Grammy® Award-winning Attacca Quartet, a true quartet for modern times. Gliding through traditional classical repertoire to electronica, video game music, and a who’s who of contemporary collaborations, they are one of the world’s most innovative and respected ensembles.

Composer and multi-faceted performer Caroline Shaw became the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music at age 30. She is widely acclaimed for highly polished and inventive works that move among roles, genres, and mediums, imagining a world that has not been heard before but has always existed. She and the Attacca explore a wide-ranging program that includes some of her own works.

Attacca Quartet

Oct 11, 2025

Attacca Quartet (Contemporary Chamber/Herbst)

Feb 27, 2026

Attacca Quartet and Theo Bleckmann

Apr 12, 2026

Attacca Quartet and Caroline Shaw

May 1, 2025

Attacca Quartet

Nov 7, 2024

Attacca Quartet

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Attacca Quartet