The Parker Quartet had already gained a foothold in the chamber-music world, but winning a Grammy Award earlier this year thrust the young group front and center.
“It wasn’t like people were calling us the next day and offering up millions of concerts or anything,” said violinist Karen Kim, “but our engagements are steadily rising in terms of how high of a profile the venues are.
“And maybe people who had kind of heard of us but didn’t know a lot about us suddenly had a lot more interest.”
This weekend, the four musicians, ages 27-29, will make their first appearances in Colorado since they took part as undergraduate students in a quartet seminar at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2003.
The Parker Quartet is set to appear at 7:30 p.m. Saturday in Fort Collins under the auspices of Lincoln Center and 4 p.m. Sunday and 7:30 p.m. Monday as part of the Takucs Chamber and Encore Series at CU-Boulder.
The quartet has been on a steady upward trajectory since it began touring professionally after its formation in 2002, when its four members met as students at the New England Conservatory in Boston.
Just three years later, it won the influential Concert Artists Guild Competition and took the grand prize at the Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition in France.
It got another big boost in 2008, when the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra invited the group to move to Minnesota and serve as one of its two quartets in residence, playing in the orchestra, appearing in its chamber- music series and taking part in an array of educational activities.
“We were just out of school, and it was great to have a job — a steady income right after graduating,” Kim said. “It was a great experience playing in the chamber orchestra, and we still do it once in a while when we have free time.”
But everything the ensemble had accomplished to that point was topped by the attention and newfound respect it received when its album of quartets by György Ligeti garnered a 2011 Grammy Award for best chamber music performance.
As that recording of mid-20th century works made clear, the group puts an emphasis on modern and contemporary works while also performing many familiar quartets from the 19th century and before.
For its Colorado programs, it will perform quartets by Claude Debussy and Johannes Brahms, as well as Leos Janácek’s String Quartet No. 2, “Intimate Letters” (1928), a work inspired by the composer’s infatuation with a much younger woman toward the end of his life.
“It’s an amazing piece,” Kim said. “He just has a very unique voice, a very unique way of writing for the instruments that is not always easy. But it sounds very interesting.”
The history of string quartets is sprinkled with emerging ensembles that broke apart and disappeared after not being able to handle the pressures of increased fame and being together almost constantly. But so far, at least, the Parker Quartet has avoided such pitfalls.
In addition to its residency at the University of Minnesota, the quartet performs 60 to 70 concerts a year internationally, including a six-performance series this season in conjunction with St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.
“It’s definitely very difficult to try to coordinate four people’s lives in a way that helps you all stay together in a supportive way, both professionally and personally,” Kim said.
What has helped the Parker Quartet, she said, is that each of its members was in the same school class, which meant that all four graduated at the same time and earned their master’s degrees at the same time.
“So every landmark that we’ve hit in our lives, we’ve come to at the same point,” she said. “We just see a real benefit to being together and something really special in our group.
“And we’re all good friends, and we care a lot about each other. That definitely helps a lot.”
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
Parker Quartet
The Grammy Award-winning ensemble performs three concerts this weekend in Colorado. 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Colorado State University, University Center for the Arts, 1400 Remington St., Fort Collins; 4 p.m. Sunday and 7:30 p.m. Monday, University of Colorado at Boulder, Grusin Music Hall, Imig Music Building, 18th Street and Euclid Avenue. Saturday, $27-39, 970-221-6730 or ; Sunday and Monday, $20, 303-492-8008 or
