Ensemble Profiles

Attacca Quartet

Two-time Grammy Award-winning Attacca Quartet are acclaimed as one of the most versatile and outstanding ensembles of the moment — a true quartet for modern times. Gliding through traditional classical repertoire through to electronic, video game music, and contemporary collaborations, they are one of the world’s most innovative and respected ensembles.

In 2021, the quartet announced their exclusive signing to Sony Classical, releasing two albums, Real Life and Of All Joys, that embody their redefinition of what a string quartet can be. Passionate advocates of contemporary repertoire, the quartet are dedicated to presenting and recording new works, with their two releases Orange and Evergreen, in collaboration with Caroline Shaw, winning the 2020 and 2023 Grammy Awards for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance.

The quartet continue to perform in the world’s top venues and festivals, with highlights including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Sala São Paolo, San Francisco Performances, Paris’s Théâtre de la Ville, Palau de la Musica, Concertgebow Brugges, De Doelen, Kings Place, and Amsterdam’s String Quartet Biennale. They last appeared at the 75th Ojai Music Festival in 2021 with Music Director John Adams.

Having originally met whilst studying at the Juilliard School in the early 2000s, Attacca Quartet have received numerous accolades, and engage in extensive educational and community outreach projects.

ATTACCA QUARTET

AMY SCHROEDER violin

DOMENIC SALERNI violin

NATHAN SCHRAM viola

ANDREW YEE cello

Amy Schroeder has been hailed by the Washington Post as “an impressive artist whose playing combines imagination and virtuosity.” She has soloed with orchestras including the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Amherst Symphony, the Clarence Symphony, the Hilton Head Symphony, and the Greater Buffalo Youth Orchestra. Schroeder has soloed with the Spanish National Orchestra with John Adams and the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra with Marin Alsop. Schroeder serves as music faculty member at Vassar College. She also recently formed the Schroeder Umansky Duo with her husband, Felix Umansky, internationally celebrated cellist and member of the Harlem Quartet. In 2002 she was the recipient of the Henrietta and Albert J. Ziegle Jr. Scholarship, which provided the tuition for her studies at Juilliard. There she was a student of Sally Thomas and the Juilliard String Quartet. She currently plays on two different violins: a Fernando Gagliano made in 1771, on loan to her from the Five Partners Foundation; and a violin made by Nathan Slobodkin in 2012. Schroeder teaches violin and piano to students of all ages, and in her spare time she enjoys composing, traveling with her husband, and scuba diving.

Domenic Salerni is a frequent guest of the Chiarina Chamber Players and is active as a chamber musician, clinician, composer, and arranger. As a member of the Chiarina Chamber Players, Salerni was a recipient of a 2020 Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Grant and performed a new work by Carlos Simon with Peabody Conservatory bass faculty Carl DuPont in April 2022. In 2021 his one-movement string quartet, Trilobites, after a short story by Breece D’J Pancake, was premiered at the first inaugural Appalachian Chamber Music Festival in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Salerni looks forward to the premiere this season of a suite of protest songs from the first Civil Rights Era by the Palaver Strings and tenor Nicholas Phan. In 2020, as part of his response to the Covid-19 outbreak, he helped set up the Philadelphia Musicians Relief Fund as part of AFM Local 77’s efforts to provide for its community of musicians in times of need. In 2019, he performed his original film accompaniment to Giuseppe