Jacobs School of Music quartet-in-residence, alumnae win Grammy Awards

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – The Pacifica Quartet, the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music’s quartet-in-residence, won a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance for its most recent album, “Contemporary Voices.”

The Grammy Awards were presented Sunday in Los Angeles. Watch Pacifica’s acceptance speech.

The Grammy is the Pacifica Quartet’s second, winning in the same category in 2008 with “Elliott Carter: String Quartets Nos. 1 and 5.”

“We are overjoyed to receive this recognition from the Recording Academy and honored to have been nominated together with such extraordinary musicians,” said Mark Holloway, Pacifica’s violist. “‘Contemporary Voices’ was a labor of love, and it was a thrill to record masterpieces by three Pulitzer Prize-winning women, visceral music that speaks deeply to this moment and our shared humanity. It was also a privilege to record a quintet with our friend and Jacobs School colleague Otis Murphy, whose beautiful playing contributes so much to the disc.

“We’re grateful to Cedille Records and MKI Artists for their collaboration and support, and we’re proud to have a home at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where musicians of today and tomorrow are thriving and discovering the passionately communicative art of chamber music.”

Jacobs 2010 graduate Laura Sisk also won the second Grammy of her career, as an engineer/mixer on Taylor Swift’s “Folklore” release, which won Album of the Year.

It was Sisk’s fourth nomination, with a win in 2016 for her engineering work on Swift's “1989,” also in the Album of the Year category.

The cast from Broadway’s “Jagged Little Pill,” featuring Jacobs alumna Elizabeth Stanley as the lead character, Mary Jane Healy, won this year’s Best Musical Theater Album. The smash hit is inspired by Alanis Morissette’s 1995 Grammy-winning album of the same name.

Stanley earned her degree from the Jacobs School of Music in 2001 and is a recipient of the school’s Singing Hoosiers Distinguished Alumni Award. Watch Stanley sing “You Learn” with Morissette.

“We offer our heartfelt congratulations to the Pacifica Quartet, assisted by faculty saxophonist Otis Murphy, and alumnae Laura Sisk and Elizabeth Stanley, whose artistry and brilliance were honored with Grammy Awards this year,” said Jeremy Allen, David Henry Jacobs Bicentennial Dean (Interim). “We join the voting members of the Recording Academy in recognizing these outstanding contributions to music. Congratulations to all!”