ivalas quartet 

Hailed by The Strad for playing with “tremendous heart and beauty,” the Ivalas Quartet has been changing the face of classical music since its inception in 2017 with a mission to enrich the classical music world by spotlighting past and present BIPOC composers alongside the standard repertory. They have championed the music of Eleanor Alberga, Gabriela Lena Frank, Osvaldo Golijov, Jessie Montgomery, Angélica Negrón, Iván Enrique Rodríguez, Carlos Simon, Alvin Singleton, Derrick Skye, and George Walker. They premiered Derrick Skye’s Deliverance, a work commissioned for them by the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, in 2024, and their audio and video recording release of that work was released in June 2026 on the Artistician Inc label. In 2021, they created the first recording of Carlos Simon’s Warmth from Other Suns for string quartet under Lara Downes’ digital label Rising Sun Music.

Performing on concert series throughout the United States, the quartet was the 2024-2025 Curator/Performing Ensemble of the Schneider Concerts at The New School in New York City. They have been presented by the Austin Chamber Music Center, Friends of Chamber Music Denver, and CU Presents, where they collaborated with the Takács Quartet in 2020 and 2022. In May of 2023 and 2024, they presented full programs at Carnegie Hall, titled “First Light” and “Fate and Yearning.” They have performed twice for the Peoples’ Symphony Concerts in New York, for the Shriver Hall Concerts, at Mondavi Center and for Four Seasons Concerts in California, in collaborative presentations by Lincoln Center Presents and New Latin Wave for the “FUTUROS - New Ideas in Composition” series, and in a special event by the New York Philharmonic and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States “Celebrating 150 Years of Ravel.” Upcoming performances include the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Rockport Music, Dumbarton Oaks, the University of Maine, and Hamilton College.

The Ivalas Quartet was Bravo! Vail Music Festival’s inaugural month-long Resident Chamber Ensemble in 2025. Other recent and upcoming festivals include the Carnegie Hall Citywide series, Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City, New York’s Chelsea Music Festival, Newport Classical, the Chautauqua Institution, the Skaneateles Festival, and Quartet Fest West in Victoria, British Columbia.

They are the inaugural Fellows of New York’s Kaufman Music Center and the Ensemble in Residence of the New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers Program in 2025-2026. Their educational work has also been supported by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the New York Philharmonic, the Midori Foundation, and they just completed a year as the inaugural Fellowship ensemble of the Kaufman Music Center. In New York City, they have coached student groups at The Juilliard School in both the preparatory and undergraduate divisions.

The Ivalas Quartet served as the Graduate Resident String Quartet at The Juilliard School from 2022 to 2024, where they studied with the Juilliard String Quartet. They were previously in residence at the University of Colorado-Boulder under the mentorship of the Takács Quartet. The Ivalas Quartet won a Salon de Virtuosi Career Grant in 2023 and also had the honor of serving as the 2022-23 Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence at Caramoor. In 2022, Ivalas won the grand prize at the Coltman Chamber Music Competition, as well as first prize at the 2019 WDAV Young Chamber Musicians Competition.

The members of the Ivalas Quartet – violinists Reuben Kebede and Tiani Butts, violist Marcus Stevenson, and cellist Pedro Sánchez – have a shared dedication to their roles as educators. The quartet has nurtured students from the early stages of their musical journey to the collegiate level, with coaching experience including residencies at the University of Michigan’s Center Stage Strings program, the University of Northern Iowa, the University of Central Arkansas, Madeline Island Chamber Music, and the MacPhail Center for Music.