With a schedule including teaching, recording and performing more than 60 concerts a year, the internationally recognized Colorado String Quartet is taking time to perform in Ames Wednesday evening.

The Ames Town and Gown Chamber Music Association, a local organization promoting chamber music through concerts and outreach activities in the community, will present the award-winning quartet at 7:30 p.m. in the Martha-Ellen Tye Recital Hall.

The string quartet has toured throughout the United States and 25 other countries, and has performed at Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York.

“We heard excellent things about the Colorado Quartet and we thought this would work,” says Stephen Willson, Town and Gown board of directors member and professor of mathematics. “It’s especially interesting because it’s an all-woman quartet.”

The quartet, which includes violinists Julie Rosenfeld and Deborah Redding, violist Marka Gustavsson and cellist Diane Chaplin, also held a yearlong residence at the University of Iowa.

Members of the group have also won a number of competitions, including the Naumburg Chamber Music Award and first prize at the Banff International String Quartet Competition. All four members are resident musicians at Bard College in New York.

The group will be playing three pieces that vary in style and period. Beethoven’s Quartet in F minor, Op. 95 (“Serioso”) will open the performance.

“This is the shortest Beethoven quartet and really one of the most powerful, I think,” Rosenfeld says. “We love the quartets of Beethoven — it’s really amazing music.”

Rosenfeld says the quartet members choose their performance pieces based on the audience and their personal favorites.

“We try to put together programs that make sense musically as well as have a variety of styles,” she says.

Willson says Ames Town and Gown focuses primarily on chamber music similar to the Colorado Quartet, but strives to bring a variety to its live concerts.

“We always bring classical music, but it’s a great variety with groups of diverse instruments,” Willson says. “It’s all chamber music in the sense that it can all be played in a small hall.”

In addition to performing, the quartet members teach almost year-round.

“We also run a summer chamber music institute for young string quartets,” Rosenfeld says. “We run it in Massachusetts [during] the end of June and then in July at Bard College for high school string quartets.”

Due to the musicians’ busy schedules, the quartet will not be able to hold classes or workshops during their trip to Ames. Rosenfeld says she is disappointed the group will not have enough time to conduct workshops at Iowa State.

“We’re not doing any master classes or anything like that for the students,” Rosenfeld says. “I’m really sorry about that — [Iowa State] has a really strong music department.”

Despite heavy participation in both teaching and recording aspects of chamber music, Rosenfeld says the group’s main interest is playing in front of a crowd.

“We live for playing the concerts,” Rosenfeld says. “Even if there are 22 hours a day that are sheer torture, we look forward to those two hours that we’re on stage to play.”

Who: Colorado String Quartet

Where: Martha-Ellen Tye Recital Hall

When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday

Cost: $20