The Grammy Award-winning Ying Quartet will perform at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 4 in Murchison Lane Auditorium at Sweet Briar College’s Babcock Fine Arts Center.

The Ying Quartet’s performance at Sweet Briar College on Feb. 4 is a Babcock Season event.
From left are violinist Janet, violist Phil, cellist David and violinist Tim Ying. Photo by Walter Colley Images.The Chinese-American siblings — violinists Timothy and Janet, violist Phillip and cellist David — got their start in 1992 as a Chamber Music America (then NEA) Rural Residency Program ensemble in Jesup, Iowa. Since then, the Yings have earned a reputation for making creative connections between chamber music and other art forms in ways that appeal to all audiences.

The group’s projects include “No Boundaries,” a visiting residency at Symphony Space in New York City; an exploration with the Turtle Island Quartet of jazz, improvisation and the classical string tradition; a program with folk musician Mike Seeger showing the influence of traditional folk music on contemporary American classical composition; and Hyperscore, an online graphic compositional application that allows amateurs as well as professional musicians to compose using a personal computer.

The Yings, who were honored with the 1993 Naumburg Chamber Music Award, completed an eight-year residency at Harvard University in 2008 and currently are artists-in-residence at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music.

Their 2008 recording, “Dim Sum,” features a selection of short works by Chinese-American composers in the framework of a traditional concert, treating audiences to a diverse sampling of music — in the same way dim sum-style dining offers a variety of bite-sized Chinese delicacies.

The quartet’s Sweet Briar program also will include classical works, such as Giacomo Puccini’s “Il Crisantemi (Chrysanthemums),” Claude Debussy’s “Quartet in G Minor, Op. 10,” and the andantino and prestissimo movements from Giuseppe Verdi’s “String Quartet in E Minor. ”

The “Dim Sum” selections will be “The Talking Fiddle” by Chen Yi, “Gobi Gloria” by Lei Liang and Vivian Fung’s “Pizzicato for String Quartet.”

Tickets for the general public are $10, $7 for seniors, $5 for non-SBC students, and free for children 11 and younger. Tickets go on sale Monday, Jan. 26. Call (434) 381-6120 or purchase online with a credit card at www.lynchburgtickets.com.

SBC community members may reserve free tickets by calling the box office at (434) 381-6120 or e-mailing boxoffice@sbc.edu beginning Jan. 26.