Music at the Library: Strings in Harmony

Founded in Ann Arbor in 2016, the Ivalas Quartet is composed of violinists Reuben Kebede and Anita Dumar, violist Aimée McAnulty, and cellist Pedro Sánchez. Recent awards include first prize in the 2019 WDAV Young Artists Chamber Music Competition and first prize 2018 Briggs Chamber Music Competition. The quartet was named a semifinalist group at both the M-Prize competition and Concert Artists Guild competition in New York. In 2018 Ivalas was awarded the Fellowship Quartet at the Bowdoin International Music Festival . In 2017 the group was named the Fellowship String Quartet at the Anchorage Chamber Music Festival, where they had the privilege of coaching young chamber groups, as well as studying intensively under Ayano Ninomiya. Last year, the group spent a rewarding summer with the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival where they studied under the renowned Emerson Quartet as the Sphinx Apprentice Ensemble, followed by the Center for Advanced Quartet Studies at the Aspen Music Festival to study with the Pacifica Quartet. Ivalas has been coached by members of the Calidore, Brentano, St. Lawrence, Escher, Ying, Turtle Island, Jupiter, and Pacifica string quartets, as well as Paul Katz, Jeffrey Zeigler, Mikhail Kopelman, Kirsten Docter, Richard Aaron, Danielle Belen, Stephen Shipps, Andrew Jennings and Kathryn Votapek. In the fall of 2019,the Ivalas Quartet moved to CU Boulder as the new Graduate String Quartet in residence mentored by the famed Takács Quartet.