Featuring three of the most exciting string quartets to be found anywhere—JACK, Parker and Eybler quartets—along with an extraordinary group of soloists, composers, and scholars, Evolution of the String Quartet (EQ) explores the string quartet lineage from Haydn to music made in Banff by and for the faculty and participants of EQ.

Participants will explore the early string quartet, with sessions on intonation, harmony, and structure, as well as in-depth discussions of style and rhetoric. Major quartets of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Brahms, and Bartók will be studied alongside those of Xenakis, Lachenmann, and renowned faculty composers Chaya Czernowin, Zosha Di Castri, and Tyshawn Sorey. Sorey and Di Castri will compose works that will receive world premieres by EQ faculty quartets. Participants and audiences alike will explore the lineage of the string quartet both as an historical genre and its new and invigorated practices in the early 21st century.