At the heart of chamber music is the string quartet, and at the heart of the Chamber Music Society is the Orion String Quartet. With Orion as resident ensemble, CMS can present great string quartets performed in the best possible way -- by musicians who have created their own special chemistry on stage and who well know each other's manner of approaching a work and style of playing. The Orion became the quartet-in-residence of CMS in 1995, following in the footsteps of the Emerson String Quartet, which was quartet-in-residence from 1982 to 1989. The Orion’s members are violinists Daniel Phillips and Todd Phillips, who are brothers; violist Steven Tenenbom; and cellist Timothy Eddy. The Orion has been heard in recent seasons at the 92nd Street Y and at the Kennedy Center, and in Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, London, Amsterdam, Vienna and Toronto. The Orion’s summer residencies have included the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and the Aspen Music Festival, and performances at Lockenhaus (Austria), Mostly Mozart and Spoleto in both Italy and South Carolina. In 1990 the Quartet performed at Weill Recital Hall as part of Carnegie Hall’s Centennial Celebration and its members participated as coaches in Isaac Stern’s Chamber Music Workshop. With CMS, the Quartet performed the world premiere of Wynton Marsalis’s first string quartet, At the Octoroon Balls, in 1995, and will take the work on tour to eight cities in January, 1997. Other CMS highlights have included Messiaen's Pièce for Solo Piano and String Quartet with Peter Serkin; an evening of Beethoven string quartets as part of CMS’s Beethoven Festival; and Debussy’s String Quartet, which was later recorded (Delos). The Quartet performed a program of string quartets by Schubert and Brahms as part of CMS’s A Celebration of Titans: Franz Schubert & Johannes Brahms in February, 1997. Formerly the Quartet-in-Residence of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the Orion Quartet is also in residence at Mannes College of Music and the Aspen Music Festival.

Orion String Quartet Web Site