By Coral Gables Gazette staff
The stage at the Robert and Judi Prokop Newman Recital Hall sits in front of a wall of glass that looks out over Lake Osceola and the lights of the University of Miami campus. The acoustics were designed to be so clear and warm that the back row hears everything the front row does. It is a room built, by deliberate intention, for intimacy — for the kind of music-making that depends not on amplification or spectacle but on four musicians listening to each other so attentively that the seams between them disappear.
That is exactly the room the 2026 Stamps String Quartet has earned. On Wednesday, April 1, at 7:30 p.m., violinists Erika Liu and Gabriel Figueroa, violist Dylan Hutchinson, and cellist Natalie Van Winkle will take that stage for their final recital as a Frost School of Music ensemble. It is the conclusion of four years of shared study, shared performance, and the particular discipline that only chamber music demands — the discipline of learning not just to play well, but to play together.
An evening four years in the making
The 2026 Stamps String Quartet Spring Recital is a free public event presented by the Frost School of Music. The specific program had not been announced at the time of publication; readers are encouraged to consult the events calendar at events.miami.edu for program details. What the evening will offer, in any configuration of repertoire, is the accumulated work of four years: the phrasing refined across hundreds of rehearsals, the ensemble instincts developed through performances at festivals and summer residencies, and the musical intelligence that only extended time playing together can produce.
The quartet and how it was built
The Stamps String Quartet Class of 2026 was chosen through highly competitive auditions, on the basis of leadership potential, academic merit, outstanding talent, and exceptional character. Each member arrived as a freshman carrying a full four-year scholarship covering tuition, fees, and room and board — awarded not as a conventional music scholarship but as a commitment to a specific kind of education.
Erika Liu, from Denver, served as concertmaster of the Creek Chamber Orchestra and assistant concertmaster of both the Western States and All State Orchestras. She volunteers with El Sistema, a program supporting underprivileged children in pursuing music. Violist Dylan Hutchinson, from Texas, served as Principal Viola of the Mansfield Philharmonic and was named to the TMEA All Area orchestra all four years of high school, graduating cum laude. Cellist Natalie Van Winkle, from St. Louis, won the Florence Frager Concerto Competition and the University City Symphony Young Artists Competition, which brought her opportunities to perform the Walton Cello Concerto with both orchestras.
These are not conservatory students who happened to be placed in a quartet. They were recruited, auditioned, and selected as a group — with the expectation that they would spend four years becoming one.
The mentor and her standard
The Stamps ensembles at Frost operate under the artistic direction of Professor Jodi Levitz, who has guided this quartet through its entire four-year arc. Levitz is a performer of international reputation — principal viola and soloist with the Italian chamber group I Solisti Veneti for 12 years, a position she won while still a student at The Juilliard School — and has performed as soloist throughout Europe, South America, North America, and Asia.
Her standard for what a student ensemble can accomplish is informed by that experience. She has described the Stamps program as preparing scholars through the ideals of chamber music: mindful listening, deep knowledge of the score, a personal sense of mission, and an adventurous spirit of no boundaries. The 2026 quartet has had four years of that formation. Wednesday is where it arrives.
From Coral Gables to the Juilliard residency
The Stamps program is not simply a scholarship arrangement. It is a structured sequence of performance experiences designed to build the ensemble from the inside out. The Stamps String Quartet was invited to attend a residency program with the Juilliard String Quartet and has performed twice in Italy at summer music festivals — opportunities competed for, earned, and undertaken as a unit.
By the time a Stamps quartet reaches its final recital, it has logged a body of shared experience that most professional ensembles spend a decade accumulating. What the audience will hear on Wednesday is the result of that accumulation — four musicians who have grown into a single instrument.
A room made for this music
Newman Recital Hall, the centerpiece of the Frost School’s Knight Center for Music Innovation, opened in November 2023 and has quickly established itself as one of the finest intimate performance spaces in South Florida. The hall seats 200, with cream-tinged walls framed by beige wood panels and a stage window that looks out over Lake Osceola. The acoustics were engineered specifically for chamber music — designed so that wood, glass, and room geometry together create what the hall’s acoustic designers describe as an ocean of sound for small ensembles. A senior Frost administrator has said there may be no space in South Florida where chamber music sounds better.
Four years ago, four young musicians arrived on the University of Miami campus carrying instruments, scholarships, and the knowledge that they would spend their undergraduate years learning to do something genuinely difficult: to listen to three other people so closely, and for so long, that something new and irreducible emerges from the combination. Wednesday night is the last time this particular configuration of ears and instruments performs together. That is worth showing up for.
2026 STAMPS STRING QUARTET SPRING RECITAL
What: Final recital of the Stamps String Quartet Class of 2026, Frost School of Music
When: Wednesday, April 1, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Knight Center for Music Innovation, Newman Recital Hall, University of Miami, 5513 San Amaro Drive, Coral Gables
Admission: Free and open to the public
