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"The Borromeo String Quartet is famous for being innovators in using technology in their performances. They created specially designed music stands for their MacBooks and use FootTimeTM, a "pdf score-reading tool that turns pages with a USB pedal." Check out the technology in action in the clip below, from a performance earlier this year for WNYC's "Soundcheck:"

Click HERE to listen to WNCY host John Schaefer interview the Borromeo about how new technology is redefining their approach to music. Plus, a live studio performance!

"Using his laptop to read from the 1825 autograph of he Mendelssohn Octet, vioklinist Nicholas Kitchen noticed that it was not exactly the same work he had been playing all these years."

CHAMBER MUSIC Magazine: Read Judith Kogan's article in the January/February Edition

Don't be frightened by the unearthly glow on the stage-that's just the Borromeo String Quartet. Trading paper for plastic, the Borromeos are using laptops to read music during performances.

STRINGS MAGAZINE: Read Rory Williams article in the January edition

by Reva Blau
The Provincetown Banner
Fri Oct 23, 2009

Strings Magazine

by Rory Williams

"If there was ever a group of classical musicians who arrived at a concert to be met by hoards of screaming fans, the Borromeo String Quartet would be it." – Today@Collorado State

The Borromeo have swapped their papers scores for Macintosh computers! The new system incorporates a foot pedal and special music stands and has allowed the Borromeo to read from complete four-part scores instead of just individual parts.

The affinity of musicians for Macs is well known, but last night at the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater, I ran into an entirely use for the iconic MacBook Pro. The second half of a Young Concert Artists program of works by its alumni composers-in-residence was to open with the Borromeo Quartet playing the premiere of Daniel Kellogg's Four Valentines.

WGBH host Cathy Fuller wrote a terrific article on the Borromeo and Beethoven's Grosse Fugue for National Public Radio!

The Borromeo teamed up with the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra to premiere a new work written for them by Russian composer Lera Auerbach. "Fragile Solitudes" was a great success and was mentioned in the League's weekly eNewsletter.

At a recent festival for the eminent contemporary composer Steve Reich at the New England Conservatory in Boston, the Borromeo performed Reich's notoriously difficult Different Trains for String Quartet and Tape. It tells the story of Steve Reich's early childhood, and of the Holocaust. ThoughtCast's Jenny Attiyeh attended the performance and created this exceptional commentary on the work, complete with interviews of the Borromeo. Listen to it here!

Yeesun Kim was interviewed by Sandra Okamoto of the Columbus Georgia Ledger-Enquirer about performing the premiere of this new work by Fred Cohen. Read the interview here!

On April 24, 2006, the famous Guarneri Del Gesu violin known as the "Baron Vitta" was entrusted into the care of Borromeo violinist Nicholas Kitchen after being generously given to the Library of Congress by Miyoko Yamane Goldberg - the wife of legendary violinist Szymon Goldberg - so that it could be reunited with its original twin, the violin Fritz Kreisler played. On May 18, 2007, the "Baron Vitta" was played for the first time at the Library of Congress by Nick with Borromeo second violinist Kristopher Tong playing its twin, the "Kreisler."

Andrea Shea's interview spotlights Nick's Guarneri Del Gesu violin. Read and hear the interview here.

The Borromeo Quartet's performance of Schubert's Death and the Maiden was selected as the first podcast to be issued by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The Gardner has the oldest museum concert series in the United States and was also the first museum in the country to get involved in podcasting.