STRING SESSION: Members of the Balourdet Quartet will perform a free concert at Richardson Auditorium on July 15 at 7:30 p.m.

The Balourdet Quartet will be the final concert of Princeton University Summer Chamber Concerts’ 57th Season in Richardson Auditorium on the Princeton University campus on Monday, July 15 at 7:30 p.m. They will offer works by Mozart, Al-Zand, and Beethoven. Princeton University’s own Ruth Ochs will once again provide commentary.

The Balourdet Quartet earned the 2024 Avery Fisher Career Grant, as well as Chamber Music America’s 2024 Cleveland Quartet Award. With more than 70 concerts per season, they are currently the Graduate Quartet in Residence at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, and are recent graduates of the New England Conservatory’s Professional String Quartet Program.

The Balourdet journey began in 2018 at the Taos School of Music, where violinists Justin DeFilippis, Angela Bae, and cellist Russell Houston first bonded as friends over long evenings of chamber music and extravagant meals created by chef Antoine Balourdet. It was the friendships, a shared passion for music and food, and gratitude for the role the festival played in the formation of the quartet, which inspired the members to name the ensemble in Balourdet’s honor.

Soon thereafter, they joined with violist Benjamin Zannoni and the Balourdet Quartet was formed. After having been together for only one year at Rice University, and a summer at the Aspen Music Festival, they took second prize at the Nielsen International String Quartet Competition, and were selected as the only quartet admitted to Boston’s historic New England Conservatory Professional String Quartet Program under the tutelage of Cleveland Quartet cellist Paul Katz.

Visit princetonsummerchamberconcerts.org for more information.