Cuarteto Latinoamericano, is one of the world’s most renowned classical music ensembles, for almost forty years the leading proponent of Latin American music for string quartet. Founded in Mexico in 1982, the Cuarteto has toured extensively throughout Europe, North and South America, Israel, China, Japan and New Zealand. They have premiered more than a hundred works written for them and they continue to introduce new and neglected composers to the genre. Winners of 2012 and 2016 Latin Grammys, they have been recognized with the Mexican Music Critics Association Award and three times received Chamber Music America/ASCAP’s “Most Adventurous Programming” Award.

Cuarteto Latinoamericano’s members are three Bitran brothers: violinists Saúl and Arón and cellist Alvaro, with violist Javier Montiel. They have recorded more than 90 CDs, including nearly all the Latin American repertoire for string quartet. Volume 6 of their Villa-Lobos cycle of 17 string quartets on Dorian, was nominated for a Grammy and Latin Grammy for Best Chamber Music Recording. Their albums “Brasileiro, works of Mignone.” and "El Hilo Invisible" won Latin Grammys for Best Classical Recording. Inca Dances by Gabriela Lena Frank, recorded by Cuarteto Latinoamericano with Manuel Barrueco, won a Latin Grammy for Best New Composition.

The Cuarteto has performed as soloist with many orchestras, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Esa-Pekka Salonen, Seattle Symphony under Gerard Schwarz, Ottawa’s National Arts Center Orchestra, the Orquesta Filarmónica de la Ciudad de México, the Dallas Symphony and the Símón Bolívar Orchestra of Venezuela. They will make their debut with the Miami Symphony in April 2016 with the premiere of a new work by Orlando Garcia. On tour they perform in the world’s most distinguished halls and music festivals, including the Concertgebouw, La Scala, the Esterhazy Palace, the Kennedy Center, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and the Ojai Festival.

They have collaborated with celebrated artists over the years including cellist Janos Starker, pianists Rudolph Buchbinder and Cyprien Katsaris, tenor Ramón Vargas, clarinetist Paul Meyer, guitarists Narciso Yepes, Sharon Isbin, David Tanenbaum, and not least, Manuel Barrueco, with whom they have performed extensively in some of the most important venues of the US and Europe, commissioned guitar quintets from American composers Miguel del Aguila, Michael Daugherty and Gabriela Lena Frank, and recorded two CDs. For twenty-one years they were quartet-in-residence at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Since 2004, they have been recipients of the México en Escena grant given by the Mexican government through FONCA (National Fund for Culture and the Arts).