Montclair’s Peak Performances hosts string quartet festival this weekend

Four string quartets will perform at Peak Performances’ “All Terrain String Festival: Bolcom 4x4” from Friday, March 31, through Sunday, April 2, at the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University, 1 Normal Ave.

The three-day festival features four string quartets — The Arditti Quartet, Chiara String Quartet, Harlem Quartet and Shanghai Quartet — playing the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer William Bolcom, as well as music by other composers, including Mozart and Dizzy Gillespie.

The festival was conceived by Peak Performances Executive Director Jedediah Wheeler, according to a release, “to celebrate the richness and range of the string quartet landscape.”

All Terrain String Festival: Bolcom 4x4 coincides with the recent publication, by Edward B. Marks Music Company, of six of Bolcom’s early string quartets. Bolcom won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1988 for 12 New Etudes for Piano, and his setting of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, on the Naxos label, won four Grammy Awards in 2006. For more information, including a detailed line-up, visit peakperfs.org. Tickets are available for individual concerts as well as Saturday passes and all-festival passes, at the website or by calling 973-655-5112.