[6] The group then left China in 1985 to study at Northern Illinois University with the Vermeer Quartet until 1987.
[6] In 2003 the quartet became Distinguished Visiting Artists of the school's Modlin Center for the Arts, giving concerts during the Great Performances season from September to May.
[8] They then were established as artists-in-residency at the John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University in New Jersey where they are currently located.
[9] A documentary film by Hal Rifken, titled "Behind the Strings", was released in 2020, telling the adventuresome history of the musicians through their westward journeys out of the Cultural Revolution in China to their current lives on stage and at home in the US.
[10] Weigang Li is a native of Shanghai and began studying the violin at age five under the instruction of his parents.
[15] He is the recipient of a 2019 Avery Fisher Career Grant and a 2019 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award.
[17] Mr. Yu was chosen to be a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s The Bowers Program, joining in the fall of 2018.
[3] Nicholas Tzavaras is the only American member of the Shanghai Quartet, having grown up in Harlem in New York City.
As a graduate student, he began a cello program for the Opus 118 Music Center in East Harlem.
He has made appearances on MTV, VH1, David Letterman, and at the White House to perform for President Bill Clinton.
He has appeared in the Academy Award nominated documentary "Small Wonders" and in the major motion picture "Music of the Heart" with Meryl Streep.