The Shanghai Quartet announced today that cellist Sihao He will join the ensemble in September 2024. He will succeed cellist Nicholas Tzavaras, who is stepping down at the end of the 2023-24 season, returning to North America to devote more time to his family. Sihao He will join other members of the Shanghai Quartet—violinist Weigang Li, violinist Angelo Xiang Yu, and violist Honggang Li—as a full-time faculty member at Tianjin Juilliard.

The Shanghai Quartet announced today that Angelo Xiang Yu joins the ensemble as second violinist, effective immediately. Angelo Xiang Yu is the recipient of both a 2019 Avery Fisher Career Grant and a 2019 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award. He won First Prize in the 2010 Yehudi Menuhin Competition. As part of the Quartet, Angelo joins the John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University, where they have been the Quartet-in-Residence since 2002. The Shanghai Quartet, including Angelo, also joins the Tianjin Juilliard School in fall 2020 as resident faculty members.

Effective immediately, the Shanghai Quartet has accepted the resignation of violinist Yi-Wen Jiang. We begin the search for his replacement and look forward to sharing the next chapter of community and music with you soon.

In addition to their longtime residency at Montclair State University, the Shanghai Quartet has been appointed to the teaching faculty at The Tianjin Juilliard School in China, effective from the conservatory’s opening in September 2020. The Quartet will lead masterclasses, coach chamber music ensembles, and perform with faculty members. The Tianjin Juilliard School is the first performing arts school in China to offer a U.S.-accredited master’s degree, as well as other programs for young children and adults.

The Shanghai Quartet were given a full set of Italian top-quality, antique instruments in March 2018 on loan from Beare’s International Violin Society, coinciding with the 35th anniversary our ensemble’s establishment. A Statement from J & A Beare: “J & A Beare are delighted to be able to loan, through the help of generous sponsors and the Beare’s Interntional Violin Society, four fine Italian instruments for their 35th anniversary tour. J & A Beare first met the Shanghai Quartet at the Shanghai Exhibition in 2017 and were instantaneously impressed by the quartet’s animated musicality and magnificent technique. As much as to enhance the gifted playing of the Shanghai Quartet as to highlight the mastery of the Beethoven string quartets, the instruments loaned are among some of the finest and we look very much forward to listening and watching the Quartet throughout their anniversary season.”

Music review
by Kevin T. McEneaney
Mon Sep 11th, 2017

Twenty-three years ago, I was driving into Millbrook; as I approached the Hitchcock gate (once a photography studio), I heard The Shanghai Quartet do a live in-studio radio performance on a local station. I was electrified by this in-studio excerpt and purchased their newly released recording: Music for a Sunday Morning. (They now have 34 recordings with a fascinating repertoire.) That was a pleasant title, but what I most enjoyed on that cd was their performance of Alberto Ginastera, a composer I was at that time unfamiliar with, but have come to love. I have heard The Shanghai Quartet several times live at Music Mountain, yet it was a treat to hear them in Woodstock at their 25th appearance at the recently renovated Maverick Shed. At this sold-out performance, I was given a special seat abutting the stage.

Classical Review December 20, 2017:

The Chamber Music Society excels at variety, usually by arranging a mix of ensembles from among its roster of season artists. This year, a celebrity visa from the Shanghai Quartet made for CMS’s most rewarding program of the year, an eclectic program that offered music by Haydn, Dvorak, and Frank Bridge, plus a harrowing, sweat-inducing reading of Penderecki’s String Quartet No. 3.

Lincoln Journal Star:

As part of the Chinese Culture Festival at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the Shanghai Quartet presented arrangements of Chinese folk music paired with Romantic-era string quartets Sunday afternoon at the Lied Center for Performing Arts. The Shanghai Quartet boasts an impressive long-term international reputation and has recorded more than 30 albums. The quartet consists of first violinist, Weigang Li; second violinist, Yi-Wen Jiang; violist Honggang Li; and cellist, Nicholas Tzavaras.