A Love Letter to Chamber Music: The Isidore String Quartet on the Cover of "Strings" magazine
The young, fabulous Isidore String Quartet, winner of the first prize and the Haydn prize at the 2022 Banff International String Quartet Competition, is on the cover of the March/April 2026 issue of Strings magazine.
“Part of the Juilliard Quartet’s influence on our mission is their motto of treating the old like it’s new and the new like it’s old,” violinist Adrian Steele, from the Isidore String Quartet, tells Greg Cahill from Strings magazine for the cover story of the March/April 2026 issue. “That ability to contextualize the repertoire and maintain its freshness is core to our mission as a group. One way to accomplish that is by treating the music as a playground — by shedding preconceptions or rigidity in interpretation.”
The group — Phoenix Avalon and Adrian Steele, violins; Devin Moore, viola; and Joshua McClendon, cello — has been on a steady rise since winning the first prize and the Haydn prize at the 2022 Banff International String Quartet Competition, and a 2023 Avery Fisher Career Grant.
The quartet's debut album, Adorations, is a love letter to chamber music — “a celebration of chamber music at its essence, a tapestry of joy, human connection, and the enduring resonance of lives intertwined,” Moore says. “We felt immense joy putting this album together and can’t wait for listeners to experience that same joy.”
Joy is indeed central to the Isidore's mission, Steele says. “In such an innately intimate setting, the community we build through our music should reflect the relationships we build within the quartet. The spark of live music comes from the looks and gestures we share during a performance, and that energy translates to our communication with the audience as a sort of ‘fifth member’ of the quartet.”
Ultimately, this fabulous young string quartet is just “four friends who love sharing music and connecting with each other and our communities, adds Avalon. “We aim to inspire joy and curiosity through our music and to reach as many people as possible. We want our performances to reflect the world we live in — with its struggles and challenges — while also offering a space for pause, honesty, and genuine connection.”
Read the full feature here.
Listen to Adorations on your favorite music streaming platform: oh.lnk.to/Adorations
"Promise and possibility:" the Isidore String Quartet
In the February issue of The Strad, the Isidore String Quartet members talk about their sudden propulsion into the professional string quartet scene, a beloved mentor whose loss has inspired their debut album, and their collaboration with the composer Billy Childs.
The New York City-based Isidore String Quartet, formed at the Juilliard School in 2019 and coached by the Juilliard String Quartet, is featured in the February 2026 issue of The Strad.
The members—violinists Adrian Steele and Phoenix Avalon, violist Devin Moore, and cellist Joshua McClendon—follow the Juilliards’ lineage by “approaching the established as if it were brand new, and the new as if it were firmly established.” They tell writer Pauline Harding about their sudden rise into the world of professional string quartet playing after winning the 14th Banff International String Quartet Competition in 2022, a beloved mentor whose loss has inspired their debut album, and their collaboration with the composer Billy Childs.
“I learned more in the first four months of us being a professional quartet than I did in school, about what I wanted to do with my life,” said Moore.
Distinguished by a refined and balanced ensemble sound, anchored by supreme technical proficiency, the quartet is set to release its debut recording, Adorations, in March, featuring music by Haydn, Barber, Mendelssohn, and Florence Price. It is a love letter to chamber music, to the solace it offers, the wonder it awakens, and the countless ways it has shaped, sustained, and inspired the Isidores.
Adorations is dedicated to the life and legacy of Joel Krosnick (1941–2025), the cellist of the Juilliard String Quartet from 1974 to 2016, who was their coach and mentor. He was an “overwhelming grandfather figure,” said McClendon. “Being in the room with him felt like a warm embrace.”
Read the full feature here.
The Isidore Electrifies
Published on June 20, 2025 by Susan Miron for The Boston Musical Intelligencer.
Each of the times I have heard the Isidore String Quartet, I’ve been completely bowled over. Founded in 2019, they’ve won the big prizes (2023 Avery Fisher Career Grant, the 2022 Banff International String Quartet Competition) and, now in their 20s, have unquestionably risen to the top of the very crowded young quartet scene. Violinists Adrian Steele, Phoenix Avalon, violist Devin Moore, and cellist Joshua McClendon would seem to be predestined to play together. Their chemistry and goals are admirable, their performances electrifying.
The Isidore’s second appearance at Rockport, this Thursday evening, included the Ravel Quartet and a late Beethoven, but Steven Banks’s (b.1993) Reflections and Exaltations for soprano saxophone and string quartet, featuring the composer as the masterful saxophone soloist, realty stole the show.
Composed in 1902-03 (when he was just 28), the Ravel is one of the most enduringly popular quartets. Composing it just before Scheherazade, Ravel dedicated it to Gabriel Fauré; it made its auspicious debut in 1904. Annotator Keith Horner’s pointed out that Ravel was soaking in the music of Claude Debussy, 12 years his senior. He attended the first 30 performances of Debussy’s Pelleas et Melisande and knew Debussy’s earlier string quartet well. Thus, “…some of its lifeblood carried over into his own piece. From Debussy, he borrowed the use of Eastern exoticism and the modality of the harmony throughout all four movements.” Even its stunning second pizzicato movement makes an appearance in Debussy’s sole example in the genre.
Read more here.