Although all members were natives of Brooklyn, New York, the ensemble formed a strong early association with Belgium and in publicity often billed itself as "The Zoellner Quartet of Brussels"; its ultimate base of operations was in California.

[6] The Zoellner Quartet's first European appearances were at César Thomson's private soirees, but the group soon began performing more widely in Belgium and in Paris and Berlin.

[5] Of particular note, late in the period of its European residency, the mother[7] of King Albert I of Belgium presented the quartet with a gold medal specially struck by goldsmith C.H.

[3] Following its journeyman years in Europe, the quartet in the 1912–1913 season[8] embarked on what would be a constant round of activity in Canada and the United States, keeping to an intense schedule during annual coast-to-coast tours.

[13] The quartet prided itself on keeping to non-stop schedules in its numerous transcontinental tours without letup or delays, even when on one occasion in 1921 Joseph, Jr. fell in Topeka, Kansas, and was relegated to use of a crutch for a few days.

Each note is a picture, a fragrance, the flash of a wing, a lovely girl with pearls in her hair, a group of exquisite children dancing and swinging garlands of flowers—a bright mingling of colors and twinkling feet.

But mostly the violins sing of lovely things—woods and streams and sun-kissed hills, the faint sound of tiny creatures flitting about in the grass and under the petals of the flowers, the noiseless stirring of shadows in my garden, and the soft breathings of shy things that light on my hand for an instant, or touch my hair with their wings.

For instance, although no one had told her the Tchaikovsky work supposedly had its basis in an old fisherman's song, Keller described it as evoking the sea and the ocean breeze on her face.

[14] More than a dozen years later, in January 1931, Albert Einstein, who was then engaged in research at the California Institute of Technology, visited the Zoellner family's conservatory and played violin with members of the quartet in music of Beethoven and Mozart.

Upon its return to America it first performed in New York City at Aeolian Hall on January 7, 1914, when, demonstrating a recurrent predilection for adventurously mixing music old and new, the program featured Glazounov's Suite in C Major, op.

[17] The quartet's sixth transcontinental tour of the United States and Canada, announced in late 1917, included two performances in New York City and others in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago.

[19] Toward the end of its 1921 season, for instance, the quartet had already committed to return engagements in Topeka and Wichita, Kansas; St. Joseph, Missouri; Dubuque, Iowa; Richmond, Indiana; and Peoria, Illinois.

[3] In 1916 the quartet presented Charles Sanford Skilton's "Indian Dances" to traditional audiences in Boston and also to five hundred Native Americans in Oklahoma, in each case receiving a standing ovation.

Works presented over the course of this venture, ranging from Baroque to then-contemporary, were as follows:[8] In 1922, the family, which had resided at 909 St. Marks Ave. in New York City and summered in Wrentham, Massachusetts,[32] shifted its base of operations to California, where it had already performed actively, and settled in Los Angeles.

[34] An appearance in a radio broadcast on station KHJ, Los Angeles, was scheduled for as late as November 24, 1927,[35] and the group's informal performance with Albert Einstein took place in 1931.

Being, in the words of one 1917 article, "about the only string quartet in existence" to "honor" a female with the first violinist's chair in an otherwise entirely male ensemble,[24] it drew public attention, as when, after a concert in Quebec, a suffragette leapt to her feet and cried, "I never thought I'd live to see it, but it comes to pass—one woman leading three men.

This ensemble was based in Chicago, home town of Joseph, Jr.'s wife;[3] the other members, all with previous connections to artistic organizations in that city, were Charles Buckley and Michael Rill, first and second violinists, respectively, and violist Jose Marones.