Sybarite5

The Cleveland Museum of Art is thrilled to present a concert featuring the internationally acclaimed ensemble Sybarite5.

“Hyper-accurate yet fiercely vivacious” (I CARE IF YOU LISTEN), “smart as a fox” (Limelight magazine), and more fascinating than a jar of lightning, Sybarite5 is dazzling audiences around the world with a luxurious sound and unexpected programming.

Equal parts passion, grit, and musical ecstasy, Sybarite5 is an intoxicating cocktail of postgenre musical goodness expressed through the virtuosity of violinists Sami Merdinian and Suliman Tekalli, violist Caeli Smith, cellist Laura Andrade, and double bassist Louis Levitt. It is the first ensemble of its kind to win the prestigious Concert Artists Guild annual competition, and the group is constantly evolving—defying categorization—and has been keeping audiences on their toes for more than a decade.

Always searching for new sounds and projects to bring to life, Sybarite5 considers nothing off limits. Its album Outliers—consisting entirely of new music written for the group—debuted at number one on the Billboard Traditional Classical Albums chart.

The group has performed in 44 states and counting, from the Anchorage Concert Association in Alaska to Sybarite5’s home of New York City with concerts at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, National Sawdust, and Apple Fifth Avenue and a decade-long residency at Nancy Manocherian’s the cell theatre.

In addition to its own groundbreaking, portable music festival—Forward Festival—Sybarite5 has appeared at Ravinia, the Caramoor Summer Music Festival, Wolf Trap, the Grand Teton Music Festival, the Aspen Music Festival and School, the Interlochen Arts Festival, the Chautauqua Institution, and many others. International appearances include the Tuckamore Music Festival in Saint John’s, Canada, the New Docta International Music Festival in Córdoba, Argentina, and the Osaka Festa in Osaka, Japan.

Recently dubbed “the millennial Kronos” (TheaterJones), Sybarite5 is chamber music’s most dynamic ensemble, taking listeners on a musical journey of staggering breadth and depth with new works by living composers as well as the group’s favorite selections from Radiohead, John Coltrane, Komitas, Astor Piazzolla, and Pete Seeger. But as Strings magazine says, “That doesn’t even begin to describe the range of their eclecticism or the depth of their repertoire.”

This evening, Sybarite5 presents its program Collective Wisdom. This program is inspired by the group’s acclaimed 2023 album of the same name and highlights music as a truly universal language—connecting Punch Brothers to Komitas, Pedro Giraudo to Radiohead, Mahler to Aleksandra Vrebalov, and more. Expect dynamic, wide-ranging musicality from this group that the Washington Post referred to as full of “too many serial high points to mention, intriguing, and hugely enjoyable.”

More info about the group can be found on the Sybarite5 website.