"The Calder Quartet (Benjamin Jacobson, and Andrew Bulbrook, violins; Jonathan Moerschel, viola; and Eric Byers, cello) plays with assurance, focus, and guts." Read More...

"This was as musically wild an evening as I ever had at a punk club or stadium rock concert, the intensity all the more intense for it being so rigorously written down and rehearsed. In his useful program notes-an essay for each piece-Rouse described String Quartet #3 as 'my most challenging and uncompromising work to date.,' and that's certainly how the Calder Quartet played it. With their black jackets and skinny ties, the Calders look like a fanatasy of the Mersey-era Beatles trying to leap into the string complexities and car-crashes of Sgt. Pepper's A Day in the Life. They are madcap modern musicians on a mission, fearless aural agitators engaged in the concert equivalent of untangling the wiring in an undetonated bomb. They wrench such extraordinary sounds out of their instruments-whispery scratches that sound electronic in their static humming, chirpy trills which they can clip to a nanosecond's length. These are not gimmicks; they are in service to a composer they cherish, and their huge palette of expressions shows how deeply they want to find all the textures in Rouse's work. Rouse is accustomed to writing for orchestras; the Calder Quartet demonstrates how well his work can work on a more intimate scale."

"Looking like a sort of classical early Beatles, with their dark suits and skinny ties, the youthful Los Angeles-based Calder Quartet offered a concert notable for technical confidence and a keen musical sensibility shared by all four performers. Their performance truly was a conversation among equals." Read More...

"Cheng and the Calders gave it a stunningly visceral and delicate reading, managing its metrical games with seeming nonchalance." Read More...

"... Tuesday's concert by the superb Calder Quartet showed that the time-honored string quartet format still provides fertile ground for innovation and surprise in the hands of imaginative, skillful creators."

"Not your typical easy-listening string quartet" Read More...

"The Calder Quartet was also superb. They seemed to play with no preconceptions at all, no habits of performance, no tricks from their tool bag to draw on, because the music felt utterly new."

"The players handle this brutal music with untiring energy, authority, and aplomb." Read More...

"Another eye-popping performance took place late on the evening of December 4 at Disney Hall, with the much-admired LA-based Calder Quartet and the young Los Angeles indie rock band called The Airborne Toxic Event. The crowd was far younger, hipper, and less well heeled. The room was packed and totally impassioned. The charismatic Airborne Toxic Event had just returned from a long and successful world tour, and was welcomed home by ecstatic fans. The Calder's opened with a feverish, white hot and amplified movement from the Ravel Quartet. It was a shockingly good opening to an indie rock concert in Disney Hall."

"The success they've had doesn't encourage them to relax. 'It's kind of the nature of the beast of what we do,' says Bulbrook. 'As your understanding increases, or you get better at it, the horizon always kind of stays the same distance away. As you grow you're getting better, but you're always hearing more possibilities.

'At one level it's agonizing, but at another level it's completely fascinating -- to always be struggling to fully understand what you're gonna play.'"

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"The Calder Quartet plays with certain abandon, and after studying these works with the composer, I assume that's exactly what Rouse wanted."
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"With exacting choreography of Rouse's ruthless writing, the Calder Quartet confirms its place as one of the most fearlessly dexterous ensembles today." Read More...

"Whether they're performing with Thomas Adès, Andrew WK or David Letterman's house band, the Calder string quartet are blazing exciting new ground." Read More...

"For a finale, the ever-impressive Calder Quartet joined Cheng for Schnittke's Piano Quintet, written -slowly - in memory of his late mother. The piece works its way through passages of tension and layering to the mesmeric finale. Here, strings dispense echoes of previous themes over the pianist's sweet, repetitive music box-like patterns, playing like a life passing before our ears, wistfully."

"When the quartet took the reins, they were relaxed and effortless, delivering a sinister and athletic read on Christine Southworth's 'Honey Flyers I-III' and Philip Glass' 'Company I-IV.'"

"The quartet came at us from all angles physically, foreshadowing the way they'd also come at us from all angles artistically." Read More...

"Andrew W.K. and the Calder Quartet gave us a sweet rendition of not only Bach, but an orgasmic Philip Glass and a playful John Cage in a course of two hours. Clapping didn't have to wait for the end of the piece; head banging had never felt so painless; foot stomping had never been so welcome. A string quartet has rarely been so loose. The members could rarely hold themselves from smiling and rocking out, banging their heads to their own chords." Read More...

"Anchoring the festival, as it has every year since its creation, is the L.A.-based Calder Quartet, a nationally acclaimed ensemble that includes Benjamin Jacobson (his brother Peter, a cellist, has also played at the festival in the past). Its program on Saturday will feature several world premiere compositions." Read More...

"The Orange County Performing Arts Center's small but choice Concert Series has long been a place to hear the best string quartets, and this season is no exception, with visits from the Emerson String Quartet, the St. Lawrence String Quartet and the Calder Quartet.

"This last, quartet-in-residence at the Colburn Conservatory in Los Angeles and winner of a 2009 ASCAP Adventurous Programming Award, is among the most talented of the young chamber ensembles working today, combining in nice proportion brains, sensitivity and curiosity."

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"Their youthful energy, refracted through the lens of technical rigor, made every aspect of Mozart irresistable: brilliance without a hard edge, and singing lines that sounded knowing yet innocent at the same time." Read More...

"Southern California’s own Calder Quartet has fostered strong connections with contemporary composers Christopher Rouse, Thomas Adès and Terry Riley, as well as a number of younger composers featured with Calder at the annual Carlsbad Music Festival. But Calder is not into specialization—they claim the whole landscape of chamber music from Haydn to the commission arriving in tomorrow’s Fed-Ex box. And I do not know another string quartet that commands this territory with the authority and finesse of the Calder Quartet." Read More...

"Is Jay Leno a classical music fan? Who knows, but tonight on NBC, he'll play host to the L.A.-based Calder Quartet, an ensemble of string instrument players who are also faculty members at the Colburn School Conservatory of Music in downtown L.A." Read More...

"The Calders are really good. They play the classical repertory with elegance and respect, patience and genuine wit. Beethoven's first 'Razumovsky' was their other big work on Friday, and this, too, was treated exactly right: a big, loving performance full of the great rhythmic quirks of middle-period Beethoven. Better still, they let the stars come out and shine all over the slow movement. That movement is just the reverse of Mozart's. Midway, it simply soars, skyward, and the great performances do nothing to control the captivating ecstasy, as this didn't." Read More...

"The Calder Quartet works hard and plays hard. They have a cerebral approach that challenges listeners to expand. There are great chamber pieces being written every year by talented unknown composers. I hope the Calder Quartet continues to extract new material that enlarges the scope of the American musical mind." Read More...

"There are many ways to describe music, from the fanciful to the mundane, but Wednesday afternoon a young string quartet from Los Angeles compellingly brought an audience's ears back to the art's most fundamental identity: Sound." Read More...

"Clearly, the Calder Quartet is one of the most exciting young quartets to emerge during the first decade of the twenty first century, and this disc provides early access to an extremely exciting young chamber ensemble." Read More...

"An earthquake in the Mojave Desert slightly rocked Zipper during Mozart's rollicking Finale. The Calder was not the cause. It only felt that way.... I've written before that every time I hear the Calder, the ensemble seems to have reached a new level. That remains true, and now only the stars are the limit, as the Calder takes its place as one of America's most satisfying -- and most enterprising -- quartets." Read More...

"Dressed in tight black suits with straight black ties, the four gentlemen of the Los Angeles-based Calder Quartet look like hit men as much as musicians. Yet their hip style mirrors their artistry. Like an undercover agent, their music-making, as evidenced at the group's Cleveland debut Wednesday night at Plymouth Church of Shaker Heights, is stealthy, cool and potent by turns." Read More...

"Alexander Calder's mobiles balance color and form so that the organic shapes move with relation to each other and make for constant visual intrigue. Musical programs assembled by the Calder Quartet are a sound analog to that idea, balancing one piece of music against another so that each reveals something new." Read More...

"But in all conscience, this well-recorded disc is a splendid advertisement for standards at the Colburn School." Read More...