In addition to his other chamber music activities, David Finckel has served as the cellist of The Emerson String Quartet since 1979. The Emerson String Quartet stands alone in the history of string quartets with an unparalleled list of achievements over three decades: thirty acclaimed recordings produced with Deutsche Grammophon since 1987, eight Grammy Awards (including two for Best Classical Album), three Gramophone Awards, the coveted Avery Fisher Prize and cycles of the complete Beethoven, Bartók, Mendelssohn and Shostakovich string quartets in the world's musical capitals.
The 2008-2009 season comprises over 90 worldwide engagements, with a two-concert series at the Kennedy Center, a three-concert series at London's Wigmore Hall and a pair of concerts at Queen Elizabeth Hall in the South Bank Centre, as well as three performances in Israel, where the quartet has not appeared since 1996. There are multiple stops in Spain, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Switzerland and France and a debut tour of South America. North American engagements feature a performance in Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium and concerts in San Francisco, Philadelphia, San Diego, Seattle, Boston, Montreal, Vancouver, Louisville and Houston. In mid-June, the Emerson plays three concerts as part of the Chicago Symphony's Dvorák series. The Quartet continues its residency at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, is Quartet-in-Residence at Stony Brook University and is proud to participate in the grand re-opening of Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall.
