Date/Time
Sunday, January 31, 2027
2:00 pm PST – 4:00 pm PST
Location
UCLA William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
2520 Cimarron Street
All Chamber Music at the Clark tickets will be sold by the UCLA Central Ticket Office. Tickets may be purchased online, via telephone, or in person.
Ticket prices: General $60; Senior (age 55+) $50; UCLA student (valid student ID required for each ticket) $15. Tickets are non-refundable.
Tickets for this concert will go on sale Tuesday, December 15, 2026 at Noon.
Seating at the Clark Library is limited, and tickets are likely to sell out within a few minutes.
Online: https://ucla.evenue.net/events/CTO
Telephone: (310) 825-2101
In person: Central Ticket Office windows located on the UCLA campus at 325 Westwood Plaza (ground level, across from Pauley Pavilion).
If any tickets for this concert remain unsold, they will be available for purchase at the Clark Library on the day of the event. Any available day-of tickets will be sold on a first-come, first-served basis by a Central Ticket Office representative beginning at 1:00 p.m. Payment will be accepted via credit card only. For inquiries, please call or email the Central Ticket Office at (310) 825-2101 or cto@tickets.ucla.edu, Monday–Friday 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Program
Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957)
String Quartet No. 2, op. 26
Gabriella Smith (b. 1991)
Carrot Revolution
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, op. 115
Parker Quartet with Clarinetist Charles Neidich
Daniel Chong, violin
Ken Hamao, violin
Jessica Bodner, viola
Kee-Hyun Kim, cello
Charles Neidich, clarinet
The Grammy Award-winning Parker Quartet returns to Chamber Music at the Clark, joined by legendary clarinetist, conductor, and composer Charles Neidich. Frequent musical partners, the quartet and Neidich recently recorded Johannes Brahms’s beloved Clarinet Quintet, which anchors this program. The program also includes Gabriella Smith’s vivid Carrot Revolution and Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Vienna-inspired String Quartet No. 2.
Internationally recognized for their “fearless, yet probingly beautiful” performances (The Strad), the Grammy Award-winning Parker Quartet has established itself as one of the preeminent ensembles of its generation since its founding in 2002. Renowned for their fresh interpretations of canonical works and their passionate advocacy for contemporary music, the Quartet continues to chart a dynamic artistic path rooted in both tradition and innovation.
Praised by Gramophone for playing in which “virtuosity and emotion are one,” the Parker Quartet has performed for over two decades on many of the world’s leading stages. Recent seasons have included appearances at Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Konzerthaus Berlin, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the University of Chicago, the 92nd Street Y, and Da Camera of Houston, among others. The Quartet has also been featured at major festivals such as Tanglewood, Big Ears, Norfolk, Lake Champlain, Bridgehampton, Skaneateles, San Miguel de Allende, and the Banff Centre.
In the 2026–27 season, the Parker Quartet appears across North America, including engagements with Da Camera of Houston, UCLA, The Phillips Collection, and presenters in Austin. At Harvard University, where its members serve as Blodgett Artists-in-Residence, the Quartet performs on the Blodgett Chamber Music Series and gives four free public concerts each year at Paine Hall. The season also includes residencies at Madeline Island and Banff, where the ensemble performs and works closely with students and emerging professionals.
Bold programming and cross-disciplinary initiatives are hallmarks of the Quartet’s artistic identity. In 2024, they curated a program centered on nature and heritage, combining music with poetry by Arthur Sze and Victoria Chang, and featuring a new commission by Anthony Cheung for quartet and mezzo-soprano. During their 20th anniversary season (2022–23), the Parker Quartet launched The Beethoven Project, a multifaceted initiative including: performances of the complete Beethoven string quartets; commissioned encores from six contemporary composers; the development of a digital video library highlighting each work; and community-centered performances in non-traditional venues across Boston, including homeless shelters and youth programs.
Deeply committed to the music of our time, the Quartet has commissioned and premiered works by Augusta Read Thomas, Felipe Lara, Jaehyuck Choi, Zosha Di Castri, Paul Wiancko, Anthony Cheung, Wang Lu, Michi Wiancko, Sky Macklay, and Jeremy Gill. As part of Miller Theatre’s Mission: Commission podcast, they recorded new works by Kate Soper, Oscar Bettison, and Vijay Iyer—celebrating the creative process and contemporary collaboration.
Their artistic partnerships span a wide range of disciplines and genres. Past collaborators include pianists Menahem Pressler, Anne-Marie McDermott, Orion Weiss, Shai Wosner, Billy Childs, and Vijay Iyer; clarinetists and composers Jörg Widmann, Anthony McGill, and Charles Neidich; flutist Claire Chase; and violist Kim Kashkashian. The Quartet is also a proud supporter of Kashkashian’s Music for Food initiative, performing in concerts nationwide to benefit food banks and social service organizations.
Recording remains a central component of the Quartet’s artistic output. Their 2021 ECM release, featuring Dvořák’s Viola Quintet with Kim Kashkashian alongside works by György Kurtág, was described by The Strad as “nothing short of astonishing,” and by Gramophone as “defined by virtuosity so agile that it’s indistinguishable from the process of emotional expression.” Their 2019 recording of three Beethoven quartets (Monte Carlo’s Festival Printemps des Arts) earned accolades from Diapason for its “fearlessness, exceptional control, and attention to detail.” Additional recordings include Mendelssohn on Nimbus Records, Bartók on Zig-Zag Territoires, and the complete Ligeti Quartets on Naxos—a performance that garnered the 2011 Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance.
The Parker Quartet currently serves as Professors of the Practice and Blodgett Artists-in-Residence at the Department of Music at Harvard University. They also hold visiting residencies at the University of South Carolina and the Walnut Hill School for the Arts.
Founded and based in Boston, the Quartet’s numerous honors include winning the Concert Artists Guild Competition, the Grand Prix and Mozart Prize at the Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition, and Chamber Music America’s prestigious Cleveland Quartet Award.
Clarinetist and conductor Charles Neidich has gained worldwide recognition as one of the most mesmerizing virtuosos on his instrument. With a tone of hypnotic beauty and a dazzling technique, Mr. Neidich has received unanimous accolades from critics and fellow musicians both in the United States and abroad; but it is his musical intelligence in scores as diverse as Mozart and Elliott Carter that have earned for Mr. Neidich a unique place among clarinetists. In the words of The New Yorker, “He’s an artist of uncommon merit—a master of his instrument and, beyond that, an interpreter who keeps listeners hanging on each phrase.”
Mr. Neidich’s re-recording of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, twenty-six years after his celebrated recording with Orpheus for Deutsche Grammophon, was reviewed by Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim in The New York Times:
The mellow, woodsy tone of the basset horn stars in this pleasing recording of works for basset horns and/or clarinets (in various configurations) and orchestra by Mozart and his Bohemian contemporary Jiri Druzecky. Charles Neidich’s reading of Mozart’s Concerto for Basset Clarinet in A (KV 622) radiates sunny serenity. But over the course of the following works, including Druzecky’s Concerto for three basset horns and orchestra in F and a reconstruction of Mozart’s Adagio in F for clarinet and three basset horns (KV 580a), the music takes on an inescapably narcotic quality. (February 18, 2015)
Mr. Neidich is the artistic director of the Wa Concert Series at the Tenri Cultural Institute in New York, which he founded alongside his wife, clarinetist Ayako Oshima, in September 2017. This critically acclaimed concert series is inspired by the Japanese concept “wa”— meaning circle, but also harmony and completeness; each performance is thus paired with visual arts and offers a variety of culinary delicacies prepared by Ayako Oshima. Summing up his experience with the series throughout the 2017-18 season, Frank Daykin of New York Concert Review advised: “A word to the wise music lover: Run, don’t walk, to this series” (May 7, 2018).
In addition to performing as soloist, Mr. Neidich has, in recent seasons, added conducting to his musical accomplishments. He has led the Cobb Symphony Orchestra and Georgia Symphony in performances of the Franck Symphony in D Minor and Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto (also playing the solo clarinet part).
In past seasons Mr. Neidich has appeared in recital and as guest soloist all over the world, and has been making his mark as a conductor. In wide demand as a soloist, Mr. Neidich has collaborated with some of the world’s leading orchestras and ensembles, including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of London, Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Halle Staatsorchester of Germany, Orpheus, the St. Louis Symphony, Jacksonville Symphony, Pasadena Symphony, San Diego Symphony, New City Chamber Orchestra of San Francisco, Athens Chamber Music Festival, Tafelmusik, the Juilliard, Guarneri, American, and Mendelssohn String Quartets, and the Peabody Trio.
Mr. Neidich commands a repertoire of over two hundred solo works, including pieces commissioned or inspired by him, as well as his own transcriptions of vocal and instrumental works. A noted exponent of twentieth-century music, he has premiered works by Milton Babbit, Elliott Carter, Edison Denisov, William Schumann, Ralph Shapey, Joan Tower, and other leading contemporary composers. With a growing discography to his credit, Mr. Neidich can be heard on the Chandos, Sony Classical, Sony Vivarte, Deutsche Grammophon, Musicmasters, Pantheon, and Bridge labels. His recorded repertoire ranges from familiar works by Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, and Brahms, to lesser-known compositions by Danzi, Reicha, Rossini, and Hummel, as well as music by Elliott Carter, György Kurtág, and other contemporary masters.
A native New Yorker of Russian and Greek descent, Charles Neidich had his first clarinet lessons with his father and his first piano lessons with his mother. Mr. Neidich’s early musical idols were Fritz Kreisler, pianist Artur Schnabel, and other violinists and pianists, rather than clarinetists. However, the clarinet won out over time, and he pursued studies with the famed pedagogue Leon Russianoff. Although Mr. Neidich became quite active in music at an early age, he opted against attending a music conservatory in favor of academic studies at Yale University, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, in Anthropology. In 1975 he became the first American to receive a Fulbright grant for study in the former Soviet Union, and he attended the Moscow Conservatory for three years where his teachers were Boris Dikov and Kirill Vinogradov.
In 1985 Mr. Neidich became the first clarinetist to win the Walter W. Naumburg Competition, which brought him to prominence as a soloist. He then taught at the Eastman School of Music and during that tenure joined the New York Woodwind Quintet, an ensemble with which he still performs. His European honors include a top prize at the 1982 Munich International Competition sponsored by the German television network ARD, and the Geneva and Paris International Competitions. Mr. Neidich has achieved recognition as a teacher in addition to his activities as a performer, and currently is a member of the artist faculties of The Juilliard School, the Manhattan School of Music, and the Mannes College of Music. During the 1994-95 academic year he was a Visiting Professor at the Sibelius Academy in Finland where he taught, performed, and conducted. Mr. Neidich is a long-time member of the renowned chamber ensemble Orpheus.
Chamber Music at the Clark is made possible by The Ahmanson Foundation, under the auspices of Lee Walcott; Henry J. Bruman Endowment for Chamber Music; The Colburn Foundation; Ms. Brenda F. Anderson; Martha Bardach/Bardach Robson Family Charitable Foundation; Catherine Glynn Benkaim, Ph.D. and Ms. Barbara Timmer; Rogers Brubaker, Ph.D; Johanna R. Drucker, Ph.D.; The Mari and Ed Edelman Charitable Fund for Music and Public Service; Dr. Daniel J. Fink and Dr. Ruth F. Cousineau; Susan S. Harris, Ph.D. and Mr. Mark J. Harris; Judith L. Hellinger; Dr. David E. Lopez; Dr. Martin H. Mach and Dr. Susan P. Mach; Mr. Bernie Mendes and Ms. Elaine Mendes; Mrs. Janet K. Minami; Mr. Jeffrey L. Nagin and Mrs. Bette I. Nagin; Jeanne Robson, Ph.D. ; Dr. Thomas Rosenthal and Ms. Susan M. Rosenthal; Dr. Patricia Bates Simun and Mr. Richard V. Simun Memorial Fund; Professor Bronwen Wilson; and Mr. Robert A. Young and Mrs. Roberta J. Husted Young.
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Photo credit: Courtesy of Parker Quartet and Charles Neidich.