The Balourdet Quartet is an award-winning, dynamic ensemble that takes creative risks on stage, producing both emotionally intense and intimate moments. Its unique closeness and unwavering sense of team trust earned it Chamber Music America’s 2024 Cleveland Quartet Award. The 2022-23 season highlights included the Balourdet’s debut at Carnegie Hall, and a new string quartet by Karim Al-Zand, commissioned with a grant from Chamber Music America and a world-premiere in London’s Wigmore Hall.

For the 2023-24 season, the Balourdet has a full year of nearly 60 concerts, residencies, and exciting projects scheduled. They will return to the La Jolla Music Society, Montgomery Chamber Music, Nevada Chamber Music Festival, and Schneider Concert Series and have debuts in Atlanta, Memphis, Houston, and San Antonio. As recent winners of a 2023 Barlow Endowment for Music Composition grant, the Balourdet are thrilled to begin close work with composer Paul Novak on a new commission. Collaborations include pianists Marc-André Hamelin, Simone Dinnerstein, Stewart Goodyear, and violist Jordan Bak. During this season, they begin year-long residencies at Indiana University’s prestigious Jacobs School of Music and with the Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle in North Carolina.

The Balourdet journey began in 2018 in the mountains of New Mexico at the Taos School of Music, where violinists Justin DeFilippis, Angela Bae, and cellist Russell Houston first bonded as friends over long evenings of chamber music, luxurious Peppermint Schnapps and extravagant meals created by chef extraordinaire Antoine Balourdet, a renaissance man with an exceptional love of life and music. It was the friendships, a shared passion for music and food, and gratitude for the role the festival played in the formation of the quartet, that inspired the members to name the ensemble in Chef Balourdet’s honor.  

Soon thereafter, in the heat of a waning Texas summer, Justin, Angela, and Russell joined with violist Benjamin Zannoni of Rice University, and the Balourdet Quartet was formed. Inspired by their love for the repertoire and the excitement of having found each other, the four friends found themselves playing quartets late into the night for fun. After having been together for only one year at Rice University, and a summer at the Aspen Music Festival, they took second prize at the Nielsen International String Quartet Competition, and were selected as the only quartet admitted to Boston’s historic New England Conservatory Professional String Quartet Program under the tutelage of Cleveland Quartet cellist Paul Katz.

In 2021, the Quartet won the Grand Prize at New York’s Concert Artists Guild Competition, which included joint management by Concert Artists Guild in the U.S., and Young Classical Artist’s Trust (YCAT) in the UK and Europe. In addition, the Balourdet has been prizewinners in Canada’s Banff International String Quartet Competition, the International Premio Paolo Borciani Competition in Italy, Gold Medal winners at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, and Gold Medal and Audience Prizewinners at the Yellow Springs Competition.

Angela Bae, Violin | Justin DeFilippis, Violin | Benjamin Zannoni, Viola | Russell Houston, Cello

“First-class Beethoven playing…”
–Chicago Classical Review

“Absolute musical perfection… full, robust sound… impeccable balance”
–The Boston Musical Intelligencer

“performed with such exquisitely delightful passion that the whole audience must have been thinking Yes, Yes, YES!”
–The Millbrook Independent

“so electrifying was this young, ebullient foursome that anything could be allowed…It was an outward love affair played with love…winning from this most winning ensemble.”
–The Classical Music Network

 “teeming with integrity and purpose”
–The Violin Channel

“the Balourdet Quartet poured forth superb sounds with exhilarating hints of Romantic style and passion…”
–Seen and Heard International 

“youthful exuberance…seamless music making”
–In the Spotlight