The Ciompi Quartet was founded at Duke University in 1965 by the renowned Italian violinist Giorgio Ciompi. All its members are professors at Duke University and play a leading role in its cultural life, in addition to traveling widely throughout the year for performances. In a career that includes 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 rare 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.

The Quartet travels abroad twice in 2008-09 for concerts in Germany and the Czech Republic. US concerts range across the country from Washington State to Texas to New York City. The Ciompi has appeared regularly at venues such as New York’s Merkin and Weill Halls, Boston’s Jordan Hall, and the National and Phllips Galleries in Washington, DC. In the summer the Quartet performs at Monadnock Music in New Hampshire, with recent appearances at the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in Michigan, North Carolina's Eastern Music Festival and Highlands Chamber Music Festival. The Ciompi members excel as communicators and are frequent choice for residencies in many settings, ranging from colleges to inner city and rural schools.

Recent musical collaborations have included the distinguished talents of pianists Bella Davidovich, Menahem Pressler and James Tocco, cellist Ronald Leonard, oboist Joseph Robinson, saxophonist Branford Marsalis, soprano Susan Narucki, and jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon. The latter four performed world premieres with the Ciompi Quartet, reflecting the Quartet's commitment to creative programming, which often mixes the old and the brand new in exciting ways. The Ciompi’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. The Quartet's upcoming CD is a Naxos recording of the quartets of Paul Schoenfield including the popular "Tales of 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.