Ambrosia Quartet
Performance Details
Date: Wednesday, November 16, 2022 at 7:00pm
Location: Ewell Recital Hall
Admission: Free, no tickets required
In 2002, four friends decided to join forces to explore their collective passion for chamber music. Thus, Hampton Roads’ Ambrosia Quartet was formed.
This dynamic ensemble will thrill you with their interpretations of the very best music written for string quartet, from classical favorites to the most recent compositions of celebrated contemporary composers. These talented individuals are all members of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, but their backgrounds are as diverse as the music they play. Violinists Simon Lapointe and Mayu Cipriano hail from Québec and Tokyo, respectively; violist Beverly Kane Baker grew up locally in Hampton; and cellist Rebecca Gilmore came to the area from Charlotte, North Carolina. Their resumes collectively represent many years of study at the very best conservatories, including the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University, Indiana and Rice Universities, and the Juilliard School.
In nearly twenty years of recitals, Ambrosia Quartet has explored the chamber music of Haydn to Hailstork and Shostakovich to Caroline Shaw. They have been featured by prestigious organizations such as The Feldman Chamber Music Series, the Virginia Arts Festival, and the Virginia Symphony Orchestra. Fond of collaborations, the quartet has performed a Lapointe transcription of Chopin’s Piano Concerto in f with concert pianist Prisca Benoit as part of Sentara Heart Hospital’s “Music & Medicine” series, founded by Dr. Kamal Chémali, a neurologist specializing in performance medicine.
WHRO has featured this dynamo group over radio and livestream concerts, most recently, “Sonatas & Stories”. The quartet is adaptable, reveling in different styles to diverse audiences in churches, museums, libraries, and fine concert halls in the U.S. and internationally.
The quartet has worked closely with Hampton Roads’ composers, having recorded Dr. Adolphus Hailstork’s “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” (Albany Records) with “great style and lively energy” gathering listeners daily on Spotify and YouTube and premiered several works by John S. Dixon, including serving as artistic editors of Dixon's transcription for string quartet of Mozart's famous variations for piano on Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. They have forged another bond within the community recently, becoming the Quartet in Residence for The Academy of Music, a community music school headquartered in Norfolk as well as a partnership with the Hampton Roads Chamber Players’ students.
Some might think it no surprise that an excellent orchestra would bring forth an excellent string quartet, but this is not always the case. Chamber music ensembles require a rare chemistry to elevate the playing to a special realm. The Ambrosia Quartet has that chemistry and achieves that elevation. In classical mythology, "ambrosia" is the food of the gods: this quartet exists to share ambrosia with you.
About Nicole Oswald
Nicole Oswald joined the Virginia Symphony Orchestra core violin section in 2022. Prior to this position, Nicole was concertmaster of The Orchestra Now and a member of the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra. She is also the violinist in Ensemble 1828, a piano trio based in northern California. Other notable collaborations include performances with Gil Shaham, Andrés Cárdenes, Charlie Castleman, Chauncey Patterson, Heidi and Laura Wilcox and the Bergonzi String Quartet among others. In addition, she has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician across the United States and abroad since the age of 10 when she debuted near her hometown of Boise, Idaho. As an educator, Nicole’s students have gone on to study at some of the country’s top conservatories and music schools. As faculty at the Miami Youth for Chamber Music, she taught lessons, coached chamber music and gave masterclasses and performance workshops. Nicole has also been a guest artist/lecturer at the Castleman Quartet Program in NY and the Modern School of Music and Dance in Santiago, Chile. Ms. Oswald’s primary mentors are Charlie Castleman and Andrés Cárdenes. She attended the Eastman School of Music, Frost School of Music and Carnegie Mellon University. As a teenager, Nicole studied abroad at the Utrechts Conservatory in The Netherlands. Nicole currently resides in Virginia’s Hampton Roads community.
