Taiwanese-American string ensemble Formosa Quartet will be holding three concerts in California this spring with the support of the Taiwan Academy in Los Angeles and the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. All concerts will be admission-free and open to the public.
The first concert will take place at the Westwood-based Taiwan Academy on Jan. 8. Partnering with the Ministry of Culture's branch office in Los Angeles, Formosa Quartet will promote Taiwan's diverse culture by bringing Formosa-inspired music, which has been Formosa Quartet's mission ever since it was founded 16 years ago. Their newly released album "From Hungary to Taiwan" features three commissioned works that juxtapose folk-influenced Hungarian classical and rural masterpieces with their Formosan counterparts. The door will open at 6.30pm, and a light reception will be held prior to the performance starting at 7.30pm.
The second and third concerts to be presented by Formosa Quartet will be at UCLA's Schoenberg Hall at 7pm on Jan. 10 and April 18. In the January concert, Formosa Quartet will perform Tchaikovsky's String Quartet No. 1 in D major, Wei-Chieh Lin's Pasibutbut, and Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 3 in F major. In the April concert, Formosa Quartet will join forces with professor of cello Antonio Lysy and UCLA School of Music students to present George Enescu's monumental and rarely heard string octet.
Formosa Quartet comprises Jasmine Lin, Wayne Lee, Che-Yen Chen, and Deborah Pae. Chen is also a professor of viola at Herb Alpert School of Music. The three others are current faculty members at Eastern Michigan University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Roosevelt University, and have previously held positions at the Taos School of Music and Juilliard School.
Formosa Quartet is currently serving a new, two-part Mari and Ed Edelman String Quartet Residency at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. Both residencies (January and April 2019) include instrumental masterclasses, chamber music masterclasses, open rehearsals, and concerts at UCLA's Schoenberg Hall and the Taiwan Academy in Los Angeles.