Timothy Shiu & Soh-Hyun Park Altino, violins; Lenny Schranze, viola; Leonardo Altino, cello

Since its inception in 1994, the Ceruti Quartet has brought chamber music to audiences of all ages in performances described variously as “spirited, richly colorful, and incisive” and “intimately poetic.”  They have presented recitals in such venues as Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall; the Goethe Institut in New York City; the National Assembly in Seoul, Korea; the Ford Center, MS; the Peace Center for the Arts, SC; and the Teatro Santa Isabel in Recife, Brazil. They have been featured artists for the Memphis Chamber Music Society; the Bechstein Hall Concert Series, AK; and both the Fine Arts Center and the Governor’s School for the Arts, SC.  In addition to its formal concerts, the Quartet has been dedicated to fostering chamber music in the next generation of audiences and musicians through teaching/performing residencies in Tennessee, South Carolina, Michigan, Georgia, and New York.

The members of the Ceruti Quartet—violinists  Soh-Hyun Park Altino and Timothy Shiu, violist Lenny Schranze, and cellist Leonardo Altino—are members of the string faculty at the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music at the University of Memphis, where they also direct the string chamber music program.  They spend their summers as faculty members at the Masterworks Festival and the Interlochen Center for the Arts.

The Ceruti members have collectively pursued their individual studies at the Cleveland Insitute of Music, the Eastman School of Music, New England Conservatory, Yale University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Detmold Musikhochschulle, the Peabody Institute of Music, and the Juilliard School. They have worked with pedagogues such as Aldo Parisot, Donald Weilerstein, Lawrence Lesser, Heidi Castleman, Dorothy Delay, Max Aronoff, Victor Danchenko, Suren Bagratuni, and Joseph Fuchs.