Our beloved Judith Eissenberg is moving on from her post as our second violinist and as the last remaining founding member still with the Lydian String Quartet after 42 remarkable years of service to the quartet and Brandeis University (1980-2022) where she also founded the intercultural residency program MusicUnitesUS. 42 years: that would be a long marriage for anybody, and Judy was musically married to three other quartet members in five different configurations, every one of them always trying to come up with a unified point of view! Now Professor Emeritus, she will devote more of her time to her position as Professor of Music at Boston Conservatory at Berklee (2001-present). She has played a significant role in teaching and coordinating chamber music there as well as being involved in helping BOCO students develop their ideas and resources for community engagement.
Second violin since 1980, Judy participated in competitions that won the Lydians top prizes at the Evian (1982, Best Performance of a Contemporary Piece and Best Performance of a French Piece), Banff (1983), and Portsmouth (1985) International String Quartet Competitions, and winning the Naumburg Chamber Music Award in 1984. She can be heard as a Lydian in over 30 recordings (Nonesuch, CRI, Harmonia Mundi, New World Records, Musica Omnia, Albany Records, etc.). Other chamber music affiliations include Boston Chamber Music Society, Emmanuel Music, and various summer festivals throughout the US. With experience in period instrument performance, she has been soloist with and core member of Boston Baroque and Handel and Haydn Society.
Judy continues to collaborate with musicians in western classical, jazz, Korean Gugak, Indian classical, Chinese classical, and enjoys cross-disciplinary work in film, theater, dance, electronics/digital, video, etc.. During her run as a Lydian, the Quartet received the 2005 Top Classical Performance Award (Boston Globe), the 1992 Boston Globe Best Contemporary Recording, as well as Best Record of the Year and Artists of the Year (Boston Globe, 1990). She has received multiple grants and awards for her work in the Western classical tradition, including from the Copland Foundation, Pew Charitable Trust, Chamber Music America, Meet the Composer/Rockefeller Foundation/AT Jazz Program, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, and Readers’ Digest. She has also received grants and fellowships for her work and research in diverse world traditions, including: a grant (2016) from Center Stage Korea, a grant (2014) from the Whiting Foundation Fellowship for research in Andean Music of Peru, was a (2013) Harvard University Fellow for studies in Ethnomusicology, received a (2013) Norman Grant for Faculty Research to go to Bamako, Mali and a (2011) fellowship sponsored by South Korean government to attend the International Gugak Workshop in Seoul, one of 19 international participants.
Judy’s presence will be sorely missed in the Slosberg classrooms and on the concert hall stages at Lydian concerts. We are all grateful that Judy will be close by, teaching chamber music at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee and focusing on other performing work outside of the quartet. And we are very excited for the music making that the future holds for us all. Once a Lydian, always a Lydian!
