Biographies

Quartet Bio

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.

Individual bios

Eric Pritchard, who joined the Ciompi Quartet in 1995, was formerly the First Violinist of the Alexander and Oxford Quartets. Mr. Pritchard has taught at Miami University, San Francisco State University, City University of New York, and the North Carolina School of the Arts. He was winner of the National Federation of Music Clubs Award in Violin as well as the first prize winner at the Portsmouth (England) International String Quartet Competition and the Coleman and Fischoff national chamber music competitions. He has performed widely as a recitalist and as soloist with the Boston Pops and orchestras in Europe and South America. His major teachers were Eric Rosenblith, Josef Gingold, Ivan Galamian and Isadore Tinkleman and he holds degrees from Indiana University and the Juilliard School.

Hsiao-mei Ku has won merit as a soloist, chamber musician and teacher in the US and her native China. She performed widely in China where she gave her first live performance on National TV when she was 11 years old, and later won the Government Award of Best Performance. At Indiana University in this country, she received her Master of Music degree with distinction, and was awarded the Performer's Certificate by the School of Music, where she studied and worked with Franco Gulli, Rostislav Dubinsky, Gary Hoffman and Janos Starker. Formerly Associate Concertmaster of North Carolina Symphony, Ms. Ku joined the Ciompi Quartet in 1990. She is in demand as a teacher on two continents, serving on the faculty at Duke University and Guangzhou Xinghai Conservatory. She is a founding member of the Chirusca Trio; has taught master classes and appeared as a soloist with Eastern Music Festival; and has collaborated with pianist Ann Schein and cellist Steve Kates. Her recent recording of three violin solo pieces, released on CD by China Records, is part of a Chinese composer Zheng Qiu-feng's celebration. She performs on a violin made by J.B.Vuillaume.

As as solo violist Jonathan Bagg has a continuing interest in bringing new, unfamiliar, and forgotten works to life. Recitals have brought him to places such as the Phillips Gallery in Washington DC, Boston’s Jordan Hall, and Manchester, New Hamphsire’s Currier Gallery. Concerto appearances include the Pioneer Valley Symphony in Massachusetts, the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston, the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, and the Monadnock Music Festival Orchestra. Bagg has recorded the solo music for viola and piano by Robert Fuchs (1847-1927), and also contemporary solo works by Malcolm Peyton and Donald Wheelock. His most recent disc is of music for viola and piano by Robert and Clara Schumann with pianist Jane Hawkins, on the Centaur label. He appears on an upcoming Bridge Records CD playing a work written for him by American composer Arthur Levering. In 2007 Mr. Bagg became Music Director of the Monadnock Music festival in New Hampshire. He directs the chamber music program at Duke University, where he served as Director of Undergraduate Studeies for seven years. He graduated with honors from both Yale University (B.A.), and the New England Conservatory (M.M.), where he was a student of Walter Trampler.

In addition to his work with the Ciompi Quartet, Fred Raimi especially enjoys the opportunity to perform with his wife, Jane Hawkins. Jane has performed often with the Ciompi Quartet and its members, going back to recitals with Giorgio Ciompi in the 1970s. Mr. Raimi began his studies as a youth in Detroit at Cass Technical High School. This season he and Jane Hawkins will join forces with an old Detroit friend, Richard Luby, for a concert of Beethoven and Brahms trios for the Mallarme Chamber Players. Mr. Raimi joined the Duke faculty and the Ciompi Quartet in 1974, after graduating from the Juilliard School and receiving a Masters degree from State University of New York-Binghamton, where he performed as a member of the Amici Quartet. Among his marks of distinction, Mr. Raimi has won the International Cello Competition in Portugal and was a participant in Pablo Casals' final master class. His instrument was made by Vincenzo Ruggieri in Cremona, Italy, in 1691.