Performance
Formed in 2010, The Ligeti Quartet is dedicated to performing modern and contemporary music, commissioning new works, and engaging a diverse audience. Comprising graduates from the Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music and the University of Oxford, the quartet has established a reputation as leading exponents of new music, with engagements taking them throughout the UK and abroad.
They have performed at normal concert halls such as the Wigmore Hall, Purcell Room, Barbican Hall, Kings Place, and Carnegie Hall - and also in an IMAX Theatre, in museums, galleries, theatres, pubs, on a fishing boat, and on ‘icebergs’ outside the Shell headquarters, as part of a Greenpeace campaign.
The Ligeti Quartet regularly works with artists outside classical music; they have performed with musicians such as Sean Noonan, Wadada Leo Smith, Shabaka Hutchings, Laura Jurd, and You Are Wolf. They have gained a reputation for an innovative approach to new music, through work with performance artists, video, actors and DJs.
They also maintain a particular interest in education, regularly leading workshops and recording pieces by student composers. They are the quartet in residence at the University of Sheffield for 2015-17.
The Ligeti Quartet is grateful to have received commissioning grants from the Britten-Pears Foundation, Hinrichsen Foundation, RVW Trust, and St John’s Smith Square. They have also been generously supported by Help Musicians UK, the Tillett Trust, and the Zetland Foundation to further their training with the European Chamber Music Academy (ECMA), under the tutelage of Hatto Beyerle of the Alban Berg Quartet. They have had coaching with members of the Arditti, Chilingirian, and Lindsay Quartets, and have been mentored by the Kronos Quartet.
Mandhira de Saram - violin
Patrick Dawkins - violin
Richard Jones - viola
Valerie Welbanks - cello
