The Ciompi Quartet was founded at Duke University in 1965 by the renowned Italian violinist Giorgio Ciompi. All its members are professors at Duke and play a leading role in its cultural life, in addition to traveling widely throughout the year for performances. In a career that includes many hundreds of concerts and spans five continents, the Ciompi Quartet has developed a reputation for performances of real intelligence and musical sophistication, and for a warm, unified sound that is enhanced by each player’s strong individual voice. With a maturity and insight born of wide experience, the Ciompi Quartet projects the heart and soul of the music, in a repertoire that ranges from well-known masterpieces to works by today’s most communicative composers.
Recent concerts have ranged across the country from Washington State to Texas, and abroad from China to Germany, Prague, Serbia and Albania. In the summer the Quartet has performed at Monadnock Music in New Hampshire, at the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in Michigan, North Carolina’s Eastern Music Festival and Highlands Chamber Music Festival. Collaborations have included the distinguished talents of pianists Bella Davidovich, Menahem Pressler and James Tocco, the Borromeo Quartet, oboist Joseph Robinson, saxophonist Branford Marsalis, soprano Susan Narucki, and jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon. The latter four performed world premieres with the Ciompi, reflecting the Quartet’s commitment to creative programming, which often mixes the old and the brand new in exciting ways. The Quartet’s extensive record of commissions includes many strong works that it continues to play on tour. Close ties to composers such as Paul Schoenfield, Stephen Jaffe, Scott Lindroth, and Mark Kuss, continue to produce important contributions to the repertoire. Upcoming commissions are from Lindroth and Pulitzer Prize winner Melinda Wagner. The Quartet’s latest recording is on Naxos, of the quartets of Paul Schoenfield including the popular “Tales from Chelm.” It adds to numerous other discs on the CRI, Arabesque, Albany, Gasparo, and Sheffield Lab labels, with music from Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, up through the present.
