Quartet Bio

The Cavani Quartet
Annie Fullard, violin Catherine Cosbey, violin Samuel Rosenthal, viola, and Kyle Price, cello

Described by the Washington Post as “completely engrossing, powerful and elegant,” the Cavani Quartet’s artistic excellence, generous spirit, and fervent ambassadorship for great music has placed them among America’s greatest string quartets.Over more than thirty years, the quartet has garnered impressive recognition including the Naumburg Chamber Music Award, Ohio Governor’s Award for the Arts, Musical America Magazine’s Young Artists of the Year, The Cleveland Quartet Award, ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, and The Guarneri Quartet Award for Artistic Excellence. They are also laureates of the Fischoff, Coleman, and Banff International Quartet Competitions. The Cavani Quartet maintains an energetic balance between performing cycles of Beethoven and Bartók quartets, collaborating with living composers such as Josh Henderson, Gabriela Lena Frank and Joan Tower, and creating multifaceted programming that combines music, poetry, and dance. Recipients of more than ten Chamber Music America Residency Partnership Grants, they have toured throughout all fifty states and internationally, appearing at prestigious festivals including the Caroga Arts Collective, Perlman Music Program, New World Symphony, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Kneisel Hall, Interlochen Center for the Arts, Madeline Island, Chautauqua Festival, Aspen Music Festival, Encore Chamber Music, Ijsbreker series in Amsterdam, and Pro Quartet in France, and in in 2026 will be visiting artists at Vibra Clásica, Chile, as part of the Festival Academia Internacional de Música Portillo. The quartet has been featured on National Public Radio’s Performance Today and Saint Paul Sunday Morning, as well as the syndicated quiz show “Says You.” Their extensive discography includes works by Beethoven, Ravel, Bartók, Dvořák, Schumann, Brahms, Shostakovich, Erb, Chausson, Brouwer, and Primosch. The Cavani Quartet has commissioned, premiered, and performed music by more than forty living composers, including Josh Henderson, Joan Tower, Donald Erb, and Margaret Brouwer, and has collaborated with some of the greatest artists of our time including Alisa Weilerstein, Itzhak Perlman, Sergei Babayan, Kim Kashkashian, as well as members of the KLR Trio and the Takács, Cleveland, Juilliard, Tokyo, Ying, Emerson, St. Lawrence, Amadeus, and Guarneri String Quartets. The quartet continues to inspire and shape the musical lives of the next generation through their acclaimed seminar “The Art of Collaboration: Chamber Music Rehearsal Techniques and Team Building” and their groundbreaking Oxford University Press guidebook (Fullard Cotter-Lockard 2025), emphasizing an innovative teamwork approach to chamber music rehearsal techniques.The Art of Collaboration workshop is frequently presented as a supplement to MBA and EMBA Leadership courses at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University and for business schools nationwide. Deeply committed to providing transformative musical and educational experiences to their community, the Cavani Quartet served as the Artistic Directors of Arts Renaissance Tremont in 2020-2024. For more than thirty years, they served as faculty Artists-in-Residence at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where they inaugurated nationally acclaimed programs for student ensembles devoted to the serious study of chamber music, including The Intensive Quartet Seminar, The Apprentice Quartet Program, The Art of Collaboration, and The Art of Engagement: Careers and Leadership in Music. The Cavani Quartet is proud to have coached and mentored members of some of today’s most esteemed ensembles, including the Aeolus, Afiara, Attacca, Catalyst, Daedalus, Dali, Ehnes, Fry Street, Harlem, Jupiter, Kasa, Linden, Telegraph, and Verona string quartets, as well as members of the Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, ECCO, A Far Cry, and The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Innovative multi-disciplinary programming performed in residencies cross the country includes COLLAGE: Music and Poetry, featuring poet and Professor of Pan African Studies Mwatabu Okantah, and TEAM UP with MUSIC and MAP: Music, Art & Poetry. The quartet has served as Visiting Artists in Chamber Music at numerous university and collegiate settings including at The University of Texas at Austin, The University of Southern Illinois at Carbondale, The University of California at Riverside, The McDuffie Center for Strings,Cleveland State University, The University of Iowa String Quartet Residency Program, and the Immersive Residency Program for the John J. Cali School of Music Bridges Program with The Kaufmann Music Center in New York. The quartet has served on the Advisory Board of Amateur Chamber Music Players and on the Honorary Board of the Suzuki Association of the Americas, and participated in The Violins of Hope Project. Passionate leaders in arts advocacy and education, the Cavani Quartet views the empathy and connectivity of chamber music as a metaphor for the kind of communication we should strive for between cultures and nations. For more information, visit cavani.org.