For the 2021-22 season and beyond, Harlem Quartet will once again be sharing the stage with famed Cuban pianist/composer Aldo López-Gavilán, rekindling the joyously energetic concert experience that these five musicians brought to such cities as Seattle, Phoenix, Calgary, Washington, Houston, Denver, Tucson, Rockport (MA), and Chautauqua (NY) in the years between 2015 and 2018.

Violinist Tessa Lark kicks off the first-ever “Cal Performances at Home” series this fall, traversing the music of Schubert, Grieg, Bartók, Ravel, Ysaÿe, and Lark in a recital that will stream at 7 pm Pacific Time on October 1 and be available for virtual viewing through the end of 2020. The recital, which Lark and pianist Andrew Armstrong recorded this summer at Merkin Concert Hall in New York City, was previewed by noted critic Joshua Kosman September 29 in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Violinist Melissa White has been appointed adjunct professor at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, where she joined the Music Artist Faculty on September 12. She begins her teaching duties this fall on a virtual basis pending the resumption of in-person instrumental instruction at the school. A concert soloist and founding member of Harlem Quartet, White has extensive teaching experience through her work with the quartet, which has been committed to community outreach since its inception and has held educational residencies at London’s Royal College of Music, Music Mountain in Falls Village (CT), the Mobile Symphony Orchestra, the Santa Fe Youth Symphony, and numerous other institutions. A native of Michigan, she holds performance degrees from the Curtis Institute of Music and New England Conservatory, where her teachers included Jaime Laredo, Ida Kavafian, Donald Weilerstein, and Miriam Fried.

Pianist-composer Michael Brown, an artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, was the first musician featured in that organization’s new Front Row: Artist Series—a weekly virtual concert series showcasing eight CMSLC artists. Brown also made a little bit of musical history this spring as the first artist to collaborate virtually, rather than live and in person, with educator/musicologist/composer Rob Kapilow on Kapilow’s long-running What Makes It Great? program.

Harlem Quartet is known for the unique eclecticism of its repertoire, and the ensemble’s newest recording affirms that legacy. Cross Pollination, a self-produced CD to be released on July 17, features music from the European canon (Debussy’s String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 10); classic American jazz (Dizzy Gillespie’s A Night in Tunisia, as arranged by Dave Glenn and Harlem Quartet); a take on Ragtime by a contemporary European-American composer (William Bolcom’s Three Rags for String Quartet); and Cuarteto en guagancó, an African dance-inspired work by another eminent living composer, Cuba’s Guido Lopéz-Gavilán (father of Havana-born Ilmar Gavilán, Harlem Quartet’s first violinist).

As the pandemic has brought a temporary halt to live performances everywhere, one orchestra near the nation’s capital is continuing to bring its sound to the community while also honoring the heroic healthcare workers on the front lines of COVID-19 . . .

Souvenirs, debut album of the Rolston String Quartet, has been selected as a recording of the month for March 2020 by BBC Music Magazine. Commenting on the all-Tchaikovsky album in the magazine’s official website, classical-music.com, Erik Levi writes, “This beautifully recorded debut release confirms not only the Rolston String Quartet’s superb technical accomplishment and their impeccably blended sound, but also a maturity of interpretative approach that can only be achieved after long and patient engagement with the music.” Released last year . . .