Four Horizons Quartet

Sponsored by the John B. Hurford Humanities Center, this event will be held in Roberts Hall, Marshall Auditorium on the Haverford College Campus, 370 Lancaster Avenue, in Haverford. The performance is free and open to the public, the auditorium is wheelchair accessible and parking is free. For more information call 610.896.1011.

Four Horizons is an ensemble based on the unusual instrumentation of Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time with Charles Abramovic, piano; Allison Herz, clarinet; Karen Bentley Pollick, violin; Michal Schmidt, cello. The group specializes in contemporary music, with special emphasis on new American music, and performs works not only for the full ensemble but trios, duos, and solos as well.

Charles Abramovic is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, the Peabody Conservatory, and received his DMA degree from Temple University. He has won critical acclaim for his international performances as a soloist, chamber musician and collaborator with leading instrumentalists and singers. As a solo recitalist he has performed throughout the United States as well as in France and Yugoslavia. Appearing with artists such as Viktoria Mullova, Robert McDuffie, Sarah Chang, Kim Kashkashian, and Jeffrey Khaner, Mr. Abramovic has been heard in major concert halls of the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia. Actively involved with contemporary music, he has recorded works of Milton Babbitt, Joseph Schwantner, Gerald Levinson, Tina Davidson, and Gunther Schuller. Mr. Abramovic currently resides in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. He is a Professor of Keyboard Studies at Temple University's Boyer College of Music and performs regularly with the Philadelphia groups Davidsbund Chamber Players, Orchestra 2001, and Network for New Music. In 1997 Mr. Abramovic received the career development award from the Philadelphia Musical Fund Society.

Clarinetist Allison Herz studied at Temple University (Bachelor of Arts in Musicology and Performance) and the University of Pennsylvania (Master of Arts in Musicology and Music Theory). Ms. Herz has long been a champion of new music, and has performed with many new music groups in Philadelphia and New York, including the Penn Contemporary Players, the Philadelphia New Music Group, the Orchestra of Our Time, Relache, and Orchestra 2001, where she has appeared as soloist several times. Philadelphia-area composers who have written pieces for her include James McVoy, Jay Reise, Joe Franklin and Larry Nelson, and she has given many premiere performances of new works. Ms. Herz also plays in the Philadelphia Classical Symphony and the Opera Company of Philadelphia Orchestra, and teaches at Swarthmore and Haverford Colleges, the Darlington Fine Arts Center, and the Community College of Philadelphia.

Karen Bentley Pollick. graduated from Indiana University in 1987 with a Masters of Music degree in Violin Performanc. Since then she has pursued a unique career as a violinist, violist, conductor and pianist She has concertized as soloist throughout the capitals of Europe, Asia, the United States, Canada, and Russia, and has several recordings of original music including Electric Diamond, Angel, Konzerto and Succubus, Ariel View, and Dancing Suite to Suite. Ms. Pollick regularly concertizes with pianist Dmitriy Cogan, with whom she has collaborated for 17 years. She also collaborates with percussionist Ian Dogole of Global Fusion Music in a variety of musical styles. A champion of contemporary music, she has premiered compositions for violin and piano, solo violin, and violin with electronics. Ms. Pollick has toured with the New York Philharmonic, Mikhail Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance Project, the Bolshoi Ballet, Barbra Streisand and has performed in the New Mexico and Seattle Symphonies. She is currently the violinist in Paul Dresher's Electro-Acoustic Band.

Born in Israel, Michal Schmidt studied at the Tel Aviv University in Israel. Following studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London, she came to the United States in 1979 to study at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. She received her Master Degree at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and is the winner of numerous prizes and awards, including ones from the American Israeli Cultural Foundations, the Israeli Arts Council, the Royal Academy of Music in London, the Josef Hoffman Competition, the Jean Frederick Perrenoud Competition in Vienna. Ms. Schmidt has taught at the Pennsylvania Conservatory, the Berman School of Music as well as coaching chamber music at Haverford College. She has performed as soloist, with chamber music groups and has been broadcast of several radio stations. She has also worked with the Composers Guild of the University of Pennsylvania, Relache Contemporary Music Ensemble, The Hildegard Players (a group dedicated to the performance of women composers, past and present) and the Network for New Music in Philadelphia.

Gerald Levinson, Professor of Music at Swarthmore College, was a student of Messiaen's in Paris and is uniquely qualified to address the compositional problem presented by the work and its place in the composer's artistic and spiritual life.