Deka String Quartet

Student Sponsorship by Claudia & Michael Spies

Brian Bak, Yue Sun, violin • Chieh-Fan Yiu, viola • So Sugiyama, cello

The Deka String Quartet (formerly known as the Emanio Quartet) formed in 2015 at Stony Brook University where members first met as D.M.A. candidates. They have held residencies at the Banff Chamber Music Residency Program and at the inaugural New Music for Strings Music Festival in Aarhus, Denmark. Members of the quartet hold various degrees from the Juilliard School, Columbia University, Bard College, Yale University, Manhattan School of Music, and Stony Brook University.

Recent performances include invitations from the MET Museum in celebration of their 2018 exhibition, “Epic Abstraction: Pollock to Herrera,” Yale University to perform at their annual Symposium on Music in Schools, the Rite of Springs Music Festival in Long Island, NY, and a performance of Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro alongside celebrated flutist Carol Wincenc and harpist Nancy Allen.

The quartet has been closely mentored by the Emerson String Quartet and David Finckel for the past half decade. During this period, the Deka Quartet has participated in the inaugural class of both Philip Setzer’s String Quartet Intensive Program and the newly formed Emerson String Quartet Institute at Stony Brook University.

The Deka Quartet takes their name from the Greek δέκα, the decimal unit prefix in the metric system, denoting a factor of ten. Since its inception in 2015, the Deka’s journey has been shared by a sum of ten extraordinary musicians. When their tenth and newest member joined the quartet in 2018, the Dekas felt it worthy of commemoration — not only for their willingness to persevere through so many personnel changes, but also to celebrate what is to come: new beginnings and new journeys.

Cellist So Sugiyama is a 2017 Festival alumnus.