Sirius Quartet combines exhilarating repertoire with unequaled improvisational fire. These conservatory-trained performer-composers shine with precision, soul and raw energy, championing a forward-thinking, genre-defying approach. 

Since their debut concert at the original Knitting Factory in New York City, Sirius has played some of the most important venues in the world, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, the Beijing Music Festival, the Cologne Music Triennale, the Beethoven-Haus Bonn, Stuttgart Jazz, Musique Actuelle in Canada, the Taichung Jazz Fest — Taiwan’s biggest jazz event — and many others. 

Sirius continues their commitment to musical innovation with original works by its own members, pushing beyond the conventions of string instruments by incorporating gripping improvisations and an undeniable modern groove. In 2019, they premiered their new program and album New World, a politically-charged work that explores themes of immigration, discrimination, and social change. The album was released August 23, 2019 on ZOHO Records. The album and its program is both an impassioned lament for the state of a nation and beyond, and a beautiful and hopeful call to action. 

In the fall of 2022, Sirius made their Carnegie Hall debut premiering new works from their Navona Records PLAYING ON THE EDGE series, of which Gramophone Magazine writes, “On the evidence of their playing on this fascinating disc from Navona, the Sirius Quartet are a fine, adaptable ensemble and contemporary music specialists.” They also performed several of their own original works on the program. 

For the past 8 years, Sirius has curated and run the Progressive Chamber Music Festival in NYC and Munich, featuring like-minded musicians and ensembles who blur genre lines and challenge preconceived ideas of what chamber music can be, including David Krakauer and Kathleen Tagg, Theo Bleckman and Ben Monder, Craig Taborn, Mat Maneri, Billy Martin, Mark Feldman, and Erik Friedlander, among many others.

News

Carnegie Hall Concert

Event: Playing on the Edge 2: Modern String Quartet Works performed by Sirius Quartet

PARMA Live Stage Event

Hilary Tann – And The Snow Did Lie

Albums

Incantations

Release Date: January 10, 2025
Catalog Number: NV6690
21st Century
Chamber
String Quartet
The Sirius Quartet speaks past the veil in INCANTATIONS, a collection of nine works honoring memory, grief, and the aspect of loss as it appears in our interpersonal and social relationships. The music of INCANTATIONS is a speaking vessel to concentrate the profound loss experienced at the individual and communal level in recent decades into a great beyond, a release of grief for its composers, performers, and listeners alike. Exploring grief as it exists in political, cultural, and familial spaces, the Sirius Quartet commentates on the loss of loved ones as eloquently as it commentates on the loss of shared humanity in the great American political divide, or the devastating loss afflicted by unnecessary war. Pulling from various cultural diasporas, INCANTATIONS teaches a lesson in the universal language of loss, and the unique and beautiful ways we respond and adapt to it.

Retrograde

Release Date: January 5, 2024
Catalog Number: NV6588
21st Century
Chamber
String Quartet
RETROGRADE by Sirius Quartet is a collection of innovative string works from Mari Tamaki. Tamaki, a Japanese cellist, composer, performer, and producer, conjures up drama through intense dissonances and delicate tonal harmonies throughout. The result is elegant and dynamic, drawing on Tamaki’s classical, improvisational, and avant-garde influences. The album features works like parallel realities, an ode to a cross-dimensional world that quite possibly exists. It also includes sneak into the Q-city, named after a work by Japanese painter Iori Mamiya depicting a psychedelic journey into one’s own mind. Contrary to what its title suggests, RETROGRADE is forward-thinking and intellectually captivating.

Playing on the Edge 3

Release Date: July 14, 2023
Catalog Number: NV6520
21st Century
Chamber
String Quartet
The Sirius Quartet returns with the long-anticipated PLAYING ON THE EDGE 3, adding to their ever-thrilling catalog with a fresh batch of imaginative compositions hailing from today’s composers. This installment of the acclaimed series dives into the concept of beauty, expressing itself in an extraordinary duality, with each work contributing its own unique take on the whole. PLAYING ON THE EDGE 3 offers up a vibrant and challenging selection, a verbose continuation of theme. From beginning to end, the Sirius Quartet proves that they’re not just playing on the edge — they’re living on it too.

Flights of Imagination

Release Date: April 14, 2023
Catalog Number: NV6512
21st Century
Chamber
Orchestral
Clarinet
Orchestra
String Quartet
Daniel Burwasser’s music has been praised as accessible, communicative, and imaginative, descriptors encapsulated in the recordings of FLIGHTS OF IMAGINATION, a comprehensive release including some of Burwasser’s most beloved works. Burwasser provides no shortage of musical variety; the childlike wonder of Catching Fireflies is paired with the rhythmic, jubilant, and occasionally mystical qualities of Whirlwind, Flux, and Puck’s Game, while A Well-Traveled Road is a tumultuous and lively musical journey through lush, overflowing fields of orchestration. There is undoubtedly something for every musical ear in the works of Daniel Burwasser, and in FLIGHTS OF IMAGINATION, listeners will be well-met in finding it.

Quadrants Vol. 4

Release Date: January 13, 2023
Catalog Number: NV6483
21st Century
Chamber
Vocal Music
String Quartet
Voice
QUADRANTS VOL. 4 comes as the fourth installment of Navona's acclaimed series of string quartet recordings by contemporary composers. This time, a variety of ensembles perform a selection of pieces by Daniel Gil, Jacob E. Goodman, John Summers, Sami Seif, and Judith Lang Zaimont. Like its predecessors, QUADRANTS VOL. 4 presents musical creations that are highly structured, thoroughly conceptualized and profoundly cerebral, drawing upon subject matters as diverse as Kabbalistic philosophy, English urban poetry, and Arabic cultural identity, among others. Often the result of years-long toil, these compositions are by no means easy to perform – but each ensemble masterfully succeeds with virtuosic panache.

A Song For Silenced Voices

Release Date: February 4, 2022
Catalog Number: NV6405
21st Century
Chamber
Solo Instrumental
Piano
String Quartet
Voice
New York City native Michael Cohen surprises with a formidable cross section of his oeuvre, the splendidly and mysteriously named A SONG FOR SILENCED VOICES. Narrowly skirting traditional notions of (a)tonality, this selection of works leaps to and fro between collected serenity and impassioned melodicism. The setups are as diverse as the music: A SONG FOR SILENCED VOICES includes a string quartet, an excerpt of Cohen's opera Rappaccini's Daughter, a Prelude for Piano, a chamber/vocal work titled I Remember based on works from his musical Yours, Anne, as well as the album's namesake piece, which happens to be not a song, but a duo for cello and piano.

High Voltage Chamber Music

Release Date: September 24, 2021
Catalog Number: NV6366
21st Century
Chamber
String Quartet
Wind Ensemble
Navona Records proudly presents HIGH VOLTAGE CHAMBER MUSIC, the latest album from composer Jan Järvlepp. Following close on the heels of CONCERTO 2000 and FLIGHTS OF FANCY, Järvlepp carries forward the momentum with this newest release. Featured on the album is String Quartet No. 1, the composer’s first full-length string quartet—an important milestone for any composer.

Playing on the Edge 2

Release Date: October 23, 2020
Catalog Number: NV6315
21st Century
Chamber
String Quartet
PLAYING ON THE EDGE 2 follows up Navona Records' first Gramophone-lauded album in this series for string quartet. Like the first installment, the award-winning Sirius Quartet plays the entire catalogue to perfection.

And the Snow Did Lie

Release Date: April 24, 2020
Catalog Number: NV6280
21st Century
Chamber
String Quartet
New from Navona Records comes AND THE SNOW DID LIE, composed by Hilary Tann and performed by Sirius Quartet. Tann, a Welsh-born composer living in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains was inspired to write this commissioned work by a series of illustrations from the classic French-Canadian novel, Le Survenant. These images are included with the release of this digital single.

Playing on the Edge

Release Date: September 27, 2019
Catalog Number: NV6249
21st Century
Chamber
String Quartet

Described as having “Versatility and flair with lively improvisations” by the New York Times and being “always compelling and always exhilarating” by Imperfect Fifths, NYC-based Sirius Quartet is only the most natural choice for showcasing the genius of five genre-bending contemporary composers. Navona Records’ PLAYING ON THE EDGE brings inspiration and experience from all walks of life into one string quartet collection with the music of composers Jennifer Castellano, Ian Erickson, Brian Field, Marga Richter, and Mari Tamaki.

String Quartet No. 1 The Music of Erich Zann

Release Date: February 10, 2017
Catalog Number: NV6083
21st Century
Chamber
String Quartet
Composer Michael J. Evans’ THE MUSIC OF ERICH ZANN is a startling and surreal musical interpretation of H.P. Lovecraft’s 1922 tale of the eponymous violist – a mysterious old man who seemingly protects himself from dark, magical forces by playing the viol. Evans is a gifted melodist, and his other PARMA Recordings and Navona albums showcase his predilections for the rich textures and harmonic language of late European Romanticism.

An Arc of Quartets

Release Date: March 10, 2017
Catalog Number: NV6081
20th Century
Chamber
String Quartet
As the title of this album suggests, AN ARC OF QUARTETS gives listeners unique access to a continuum of composer Michael G. Cunningham’s intricate and inviting string music. Five international string ensembles present the album’s seven compositions, including Sirius Quartet from New York; The Moravian Quartet from the Czech Republic; the Millennium Quartet from Florida; and The Pedroia Quartet and New England String Quartet, both from Massachusetts.