Meet Ulysses Quartet | String quartet

We had the good fortune of connecting with Ulysses Quartet and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Ulysses, how does your business help the community?
Music is such a powerful and irreplaceable force in our lives. Art helps us deal with so much in our lives, and music in particular is essential in helping us understand and relate to other people, even when it’s difficult to communicate.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
The thing we feel sets us apart from others the most, and contributes to our success, is our willingness as a group to give 100%—not just in terms of effort but in openness, energy, emotion, and communication. We love what we do and audiences can feel that passion. Getting where we are today has been a difficult road, and we’ve only managed it through a magical combination of luck and hard work. We honed our craft together, entered competitions, pursued performance opportunities, and then dedicated ourselves to developing and nurturing our relationships with presenters and audiences, through good old-fashioned human interaction and on social media with new and fun ways of engaging with people such as creative music videos.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
You could spend years in New York City and not run out of great things to do, see, and eat, but here are a few of our favorites: Eating is always a priority for us, so we’d make sure to hit Pure Thai in Hell’s Kitchen (don’t skip the Pad Kee Mao), food courts in Flushing, Queens for some outrageous Taiwanese and Chinese food (try the stinky tofu if you dare!), Arthur Avenue in the Bronx for delicious Italian, and Taqueria y Fonda on the Upper West Side for some great Mexican food. Once fed, we could explore some of the city’s beautiful parks—Central Park is the obvious choice, but Fort Tryon and Prospect Park are gorgeous too! There are so many amazing museums, but if we had to pick one it would have to be the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which seems as big as a city itself and has some of everything. It would be a shame to visit New York without seeing one of the fantastic shows on Broadway, and visiting Lincoln Center to see one of the city’s world class cultural institutions—the opera, philharmonic, ballet…you just can’t go wrong! Finally, we could take in an incredible view of the entire city at once at Top of the Rock at Rockefeller Center.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
So many incredible musicians have given selflessly of their time, wisdom, and support to help us get where we are. The Juilliard School and the Juilliard Quartet have had a particularly deep impact on us, both personally and professionally, through our residency there as Lisa Arnhold Fellows from 2019-2022

Website: www.ulyssesquartet.com

Instagram: @ulyssesquartet

Twitter: @ulyssesquartet

Facebook: www.facebook.com/ulyssesquartet

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcIEArRXhtHZnqGPU7d6nJQ

Image Credits
Lara St. John, Lauren Desberg