The Colorado Quartet has announced it will disband in May after more than 30 years of performance. The New York-based ensemble will give its final concert in the city at Symphony Space on 28 February, with performances in Virginia and South Carolina to follow in the coming months.

The quartet won the Coleman Chamber Music Competition in California in 1980, and became the first graduate string quartet to complete a two-year residency at Juilliard a year later. It also won the International String Quartet Competition in France. In 1982 it took first prize at the Banff International String Quartet Competition, receiving the Naumburg Foundation's chamber music prize in the same year.

‘We, the members of the quartet, are deeply grateful to audience, friends and family around the world who have supported us emotionally and fiscally,’ said second violinist Lydia Redding, the only remaining player from the original line-up. ‘We have had many memorable and fabulous experiences during the course of our travels, and all agree that our time in the Colorado Quartet has been the most meaningful of our lives.’

The Colorado Quartet has taught at Yale University and held residencies at the Oberlin College–Conservatory, as well as the Banff and Orford Centres in Canada. Its members have been visiting professors at Bard College. Since 1991 the quartet has collectively been artistic director of the Soundfest Chamber Music Festival and Quartet Institute in Falmouth, Massachusetts.