A gem in the cultural landscape of West Texas, the Harrington String Quartet was established by a  generous gift from the late Sybil B. Harrington to benefit the Panhandle community. From its founding in  1981, the quartet has brought “stellar credentials” and “a refined sense of ensemble and musical integrity”  to performances across the nation and internationally. During the summer of 2015, the quartet returned to  Europe as performing guests at the International Festival of Chamber Music (Plovdiv, Bulgaria), Sofia  Music Weeks (Sofia, Bulgaria) and Musica in Univerista (Pavia, Italy). Highlights from past seasons  include a New York debut in Carnegie's Weill Hall and the PBS documentary A Sound Collaboration – The Harrington String Quartet. The quartet has also enjoyed collaborations with world-renowned artists  David Shifrin, Pepe Romero, James Dick, William Preucil, James Dunham, Robert Levin, Alon  Goldstein, Guy Yehuda, Arthur Rowe, and members of the Cavani, Miró, and Pro Arte String Quartets. 

For over thirty years, the quartet has delighted audiences with their finely blended sound and heart-felt  interpretations of a wide spectrum of repertoire, which ranges from Bach and Purcell to Bartok and  Crumb. Harrington String Quartet’s collaborative recording with the Phoenix Chorale, Northern Lights,  was distinguished as iTunes’s Best Classical Vocal Album of 2012. In 2005, the quartet also released a  Grammy nominated album of works by American composer Daniel McCarthy on the Albany Records  label. 

The Harrington String Quartet is in residence as string faculty at West Texas A&M University.  Committed to both performing and teaching, the quartet regularly provides concerts, master classes,  lecture-recitals and presentations for audiences of all ages, as well as collaborative projects with artists  from various fields. 

Violinist Rossitza Jekova-Goza has made numerous appearances as a soloist and recitalist in the United  States, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and her native Bulgaria. She has served as concertmaster of the  Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra, the North Arkansas Symphony Orchestra and the Amarillo  Symphony, and has been featured as principal second violinist of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in  London. In 2000 she was named concertmaster of the Verbier Orchestra in Switzerland. With that  ensemble, she toured eleven European capitals and their most prestigious concert venues. In 2010 Goza  joined the Harrington String Quartet as first violinist, and since has performed with the quartet to a critical  acclaim across the United States and internationally.  

Rossitza Goza received her bachelor’s degree from Louisiana State University summa cum laude. During  her graduate studies, she won the LSU concerto competition and became a founding member of the  Bulgarian String Quartet. In 1999, the group won the national finals of Music Teachers’ National  Association competition. Her doctoral studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music culminated with an  appointment as a faculty member at the Encore School for Strings, where she taught for a number of  summers Sirena Huang, Benjamin Beilman and Joel Link, among many other outstanding young  violinists who grace today’s international stages. 

Academic appointments include the Universities of North Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. A recurrent  guest-specialist for the advanced students at the Suzuki Music Institute of Dallas, Dr. Goza has also been  an artist-faculty of the Lone Star Festival in Dallas, Heber Springs Chamber Music Festival, Schlern  Music Festival in Italy, and Sulzbach-Rosenberg International Festival in Germany.

Currently Dr. Goza lives in Canyon, Texas, is a member of the Harrington String Quartet, teaches at West  Texas A&M University and commutes to Tulsa to fulfill her concertmaster duties with the Tulsa  Symphony. She is a frequent soloist with the Tulsa Symphony and a regular member of Fridays at the  Loft, the TSO’s chamber series. 

Russian violinist Evgeny Zvonnikov joined the music faculty of West Texas A&M University and Harrington String Quartet in Canyon, Texas in 2017. Before he taught violin at Wichita State University. He served for several years as Associate Concertmaster of the Wichita Symphony Orchestra and  Concertmaster of the Wichita Grand Opera Orchestra. Mr. Zvonnikov has taught master classes in Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Singapore, Dallas, Eureka Springs, the San Francisco Conservatory, and Manaus Conservatory, and has served as a jury member of chamber music competitions. He has collaborated with many famous musicians, including pianists Anton Nel, Misha Dichter, Leon Fleisher, Gilbert Kalish, and  Peter Donohoe. He was second violinist in the St. Petersburg String Quartet for four years, 2010 to 2014.  

Mr. Zvonnikov studied at Rimsky-Korsakov Specialized Music School and in 2005 he entered the St.  Petersburg Conservatory in the class of professor I. V. Ioff. At the same year he performed a concerto in  the Great Hall of the Philharmonic with the State Academic Symphony Orchestra. He took part in master  classes by the Takacs Quartet, and received high praise from its founder, Gabor Takacs. In the United  States, he earned a Master of Music degree with Chamber Music emphasis at Wichita State University. Mr. Zvonnikov has extensive experience performing as soloist as well as in ensembles, in both classical  and contemporary repertoire. Frequently invited as a solo and ensemble performer and by various  orchestras, he has taken part in many concerts in the main concert halls of St. Petersburg, such as the  Music Hall, the Great Hall and Small Hall of the Philharmonic, the Chapel, and Smolny Cathedral. He  has toured with ensembles in Japan, Finland, France, Switzerland, Mexico, Spain, Thailand, Italy, etc.  

Evgeny has taken part in many competitions as a solo performer and ensemble member. As a member of  the Grammy nominated St. Petersburg String Quartet, Mr. Zvonnikov performed in the greatest halls and  participated in many summer music festivals and concert series in the United States, the United Kingdom,  and Russia. In 2011, the St. Petersburg String Quartet played a concert in New York’s Carnegie Hall with  Wichita State University Symphony Orchestra. In November of 2012, Evgeny performed at the St.  Petersburg Conservatory International Music Festival commemorating the 150th anniversary of the  founding of the Conservatory.  

He won second prize in the Maria Udina Chamber Music Competition. In 2012 Evgeny won the Hays  (Kansas) Symphony Orchestra Young Artists Competition and performed the Mendelssohn Violin  Concerto with the Ft. Hays State University Symphony. Evgeny won Second Place of American Protégé  International Concerto Competition, where he performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City in 2016.  

In a single year, Bulgarian-born violist Vesselin Todorov won top prizes in the three most prestigious Bulgarian national competitions Svetoslav Obretenov, Young Music Talents and Dobrin Petkov, both as violinist and violist. In the United States, he has performed at all three concert halls – Weill, Zankel and Isaac Stern – in the Carnegie complex, and has collaborated with artists Peter Frankl, Ani Kavafian, David Shifrin, Eric Halen, Robert Mealy and the Arianna String Quartet. In addition, he has toured  Austria, Belgium and France, and has performed at Aspen and Round Top Music Festivals. Vesselin Todorov served as principal violist of the Baton Rouge and Greater Bridgeport Symphonies and  held the Christopher and Evelyn Getman Chair at the New Haven Symphony. Sought after as a violinist,  he has been an associate concertmaster of the Baton Rouge Symphony and a violin section member of a  number of professional orchestras in the United States. Currently he is a member of the Harrington String  Quartet and is on the faculty of West Texas A&M University School of Music. 

Mr. Todorov holds a Master of Music degree and an Artist Diploma from the Yale School of Music.  Among his most influential mentors are violinists Kevork Mardirossian, Ifrah Neaman and Syoko Aki, violists Jesse Levine and Ettore Causa, and the members of the Tokyo String Quartet. 

Emmanuel Lopez has spent the last twenty-eight years as a member of the highly acclaimed Harrington String Quartet and as the Periman Endowed Distinguished Artist Chair of Violoncello at West Texas A&M University School of Music. He holds degrees from Yale University, University of Connecticut and Juilliard School. He has won numerous cello competitions, including the Janos Starker-Aldo Parisot International Cello Competition, the Debut Competition of Los Angeles, the Wurlitzer Collegiate Artist  Competition, the Louis McMahon International String Competition, and others. As a recording artist, Lopez was nominated for a Grammy Award on Delos’ Bach/Bachianas with soprano Arlene Auger and the Yale Cellos. He also received a Grammy nomination as a member of the Harrington Quartet for their recording of the string quartets by Daniel McCarthy on Albany Records. He has also been featured on the  latest release of the Phoenix Chorale's "Northern Lights" for Chandos, to critical acclaim as well as a recent release on Centaur Records of the viola quintets by Felix Mendelssohn with guest violist James Dunham former violist of the Cleveland Quartet. For Delos, he recorded Tchaikowsky’s Rococo  Variations for cello and orchestra with the Paraiba Symphony under the direction of Eleazar de Carvalho and also received critical acclaim for his recording of Samuel Jones' Cello Sonata with pianist Denise Parr-Scanlin on the Naxos label.