The Grammy Award-winning Pacifica Quartet performs works by three Pulitzer Prize-winning contemporary composers: Shulamit Ran, Jennifer Higdon, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.

Written for the Pacifica and receiving its world-premiere recording, Ran’s Glitter, Doom, Shards, Memory – String Quartet no.3 is a moving tribute to painter Felix Nussbaum, who perished in Auschwitz in 1944. Higdon’s Voices, dedicated to the Pacifica, evokes explosive energy, otherworldly calm, and spiritual serenity. In Zwilich’s Quintet for Alto Saxophone and String Quartet, a lusciously singing saxophone shares the spotlight with virtuosic string playing. The Pacifica, quartet-in-residence at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, partner with their IU colleague, renowned classical saxophonist Otis Murphy.

Contemporary Voices is the Pacifica Quartet’s 12th Cedille Records album. Their discography includes, among other projects, Mozart & Brahms Clarinet Quintets with New York Philharmonic principal clarinet Anthony McGill; Brahms’s Piano Quintet with Menachem Pressler of the Beaux Arts Trio; Dvořák’s Quintet op.97 with violist Michael Tree of the Guarneri String Quartet; and, most recently, the album Souvenirs of Spain & Italy, with guitarist Sharon Isbin. Cedille released the ensemble’s four-album cycle of Shostakovich’s complete string quartets, paired with works by other Soviet-era composers, to rave reviews: “The playing is nothing short of phenomenal” (Daily Telegraph, London). Named Musical America’s 2009 Ensemble of the Year, the Pacifica earned a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance for their 2008 recording of Elliott Carter’s String Quartets nos. 1 and 5 on Naxos.