Chamber music competitions mean a lot to the young groups that win, because the resulting exposure and concert bookings help them break into the classical music business. That sort of career boost brings the Attacca Quartet to Columbia for a Candlelight Concerts program Sunday, June 8 at the Wilde Lake Interfaith Center.

For its Columbia audience, the Attacca Quartet will perform Mozart's String Quartet in G, Bartok's String Quartet No. 4, Webern's Six Bagatelles, and Beethoven's String Quartet, Op. 59, No. 2.

This upcoming concert is the result of the third Chesapeake Chamber Music Competition held in Easton last March. A biennial event affiliated with the 23rd annual Eastern Shore Chamber Music Festival, the chamber music competition attracted entries from 56 ensembles from 16 states and several other nations. Finalists performed live at the Avalon Theater, in Easton.

The Attacca Quartet won the Silver Medal prize of $5,000. When the winner of the $10,000 top prize, the Russian quartet Credo, opted not to return to Maryland for three subsequent concerts in June, "Attacca accepted the opportunity to perform these concerts," Chesapeake Chamber Music Competition spokesman Stuart L. Rich explains.

Besides the concert for Candlelight, Attacca performs Friday, June 6 at the Avalon Theater as part of the Eastern Shore Chamber Music Festival, and also Saturday, June 7 at the Chincoteague Cultural Alliance.

"We provide future concert opportunities for the (winning) group," Rich says of a competition whose rules require that the performers be younger than 31 years of age.

Having heard Attacca perform there, he adds: "They definitely work well together and that's the objective of chamber music, and they very much enjoy what they're doing. They have a particular facility for modern music, which you'll hear with the Bartok."

The Attacca Quartet, whose name means "to attack" in Italian, formed at New York's Juilliard School in 2003. Its members are violinists Amy Schroeder and Keiko Tokunaga, violist Gillian Gallagher and cellist Andrew Yee.

This group's debut recital was in 2007 at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, and they also performed at Carnegie's Zankel Hall.

Additional activities, some of them related to other competitions, include winning the grand prize of the 2006 Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition in Pasadena, Calif.; and being one of three quartets chosen to take part in the Pacific Music Festival's 2006 String Quartet course in Sapporo, Japan.

Attacca also represented Juilliard in the Kennedy Center Conservatory Project concert series and the Guarneri Quartet's 40th anniversary celebration master class; participated in the 2005 Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy; and also took part in the 2005 Music@Menlo Festival near San Francisco.

The Attacca Quartet performs Sunday, June 8 at 3:30 p.m. at Wilde Lake Interfaith Center, 10431 Twin Rivers Road, in Columbia. Tickets are $15. Call 443-367-3125 or go to www.candlelightconcerts.org.

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