Ligeti Quartet

Formed in 2010, the Ligeti Quartet draws its name from composer György Ligeti while concentrating its programming on contemporary music. First violinist Freya Goldmark, second violinist Patrick Dawkins, violist Richard Jones, and cellist Val Welbanks comprise the membership. Their stated goal centers on advancing new compositions and presenting them to wide-ranging audiences, which has led the players to appear at leading classical venues across several countries as well as at unconventional sites such as pubs, planetariums, a fishing boat, and a cave. Residencies have taken place at the University of Cambridge from 2016 to 2019, the University of Sheffield from 2016 to 2020, Goldsmiths, University of London from 2018 to 2021, and Nottingham High School from 2020 to 2022. The quartet has contributed to various folk recordings, among them Ten Fé’s 2017 album Hit the Light and composer Philip Venables’ Below the Belt issued in 2018. Its first release under its own name, Songbooks, Vol. 1, emerged in 2020 on the Nonclassical label through a collaboration with composer Christian Mason.

Major stages have included Carnegie Hall in New York, the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, Wigmore Hall, and further prominent London halls. The year 2023 proved especially active because it marked the hundredth anniversary of the namesake composer’s birth; the group presented numerous concerts and curated Ligeti Day at Britain’s Aldeburgh Festival, where one program featured fifteen newly commissioned pieces, one of them by the composer’s son Lukas Ligeti. Also that year the Mercury KX label released Anna Meredith: Nuc, which the quartet toured extensively. In 2024 the ensemble appeared on the album The Past & I: 100 Years of Thomas Hardy.