Quatuor Van Kuijk is an established international presence performing regularly at venues including the Wigmore Hall in London, Sage Gateshead, and Snape Maltings;  Philharmonie de Paris, Auditorium du Louvre, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, and Salle  Gaveau in Paris; Tonhalle, Zurich; Wiener Konzerthaus and Musikverein, Vienna; Het Concertgebouw and Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ Amsterdam; Berliner Philharmonie and  Konzerthaus; Kölner Philharmonie; Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg; Gulbenkian, Lisbon; Tivoli Concert Series, Denmark; Konserthuset Stockholm; and at festivals including the BBC  Proms, Aldeburgh, Edinburgh International, Cheltenham, Heidelberg, Fredriksvaerk, Lockenhaus, Davos, Verbier, Aix-en-Provence, Montpellier/Radio France, Evian, Auvers-sur Oise, Stavanger and Trondheim (Norway), Concentus Moraviae (Czech Republic), Haydn/Esterházy (Hungary), and Eilat (Israel). 

The quartet embarks on substantial international tours each season. 2023-24 saw them  return to North America, for a tour which included their Carnegie Hall debut, as well as to  Asia, where highlights included concerts at Shanghai’s Symphony Hall and Tokyo’s Hamarikyu Asahi Hall. Upcoming tours include a return to Belgium in December, as well as  another visit to North America in Spring 2025 alongside harpist Parker Ramsay. Collaborators include guitarist Sean Shibe, mezzo soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, harpist Parker Ramsay, clarinettist Annelien Van Wauwe, Quatuor Danel, and composers Baptiste Trotignon and Benjamin Attahir. 

Recording exclusively for Alpha Classics, the ensemble’s debut recording, Mozart, was  released to outstanding critical acclaim – CHOC de Classica, DIAPASON D’OR DECOUVERTE.  Following celebrated discs of Debussy and Ravel, and Schubert, they continued their ongoing exploration of Mozart with two further releases across 2020. The complete cycle of Mendelssohn’s quartets was released across 2022 – 2023 (the second volume of which winning the ‘Quarterly Critic’s Choice’ Prize of the Deutschen Schallplattenkritik). This season they present ‘Impressions Parisiennes’ – a collection of French melody transcriptions alongside a new work by Baptiste Trotignon – in homage to the composers of those melodies.  

Quatuor Van Kuijk’s international accolades boast First, Best Beethoven, and Best Haydn Prizes at the 2015 Wigmore Hall International String Quartet competition; First Prize, and an Audience Award at the Trondheim International Chamber Music Competition; as well as  becoming laureates of the Aix-en-Provence Festival Academy. They were BBC New  Generation Artists from 2015-17, as well as ECHO Rising Stars for the 2017-18 season. The ensemble was resident at ProQuartet, Paris, where they studied with members of the Alban Berg, Artemis, and Hagen quartets. Originally students of the Ysaye Quartet, they went on to work with Günter Pichler at the Escuela Superior de Mùsica Reina Sofia in Madrid, supported generously by the International Institute of Chamber Music, Madrid. The Quartet is supported by Pirastro and SPEDIDAM and is grateful to the Centre National de La Musique and Mécénat Musical Société Générale for their sponsorship. 

Parker Ramsay has forged a career defying easy categorization. Equally at home on modern and period harps, he pursues his passions in tackling new and underperformed works and bringing his instrument to new audiences. Recent and upcoming performances include solo performances at Alice Tully Hall, the Miller Theatre at Columbia University, the Phillips Collection, Cal Performances, Shriver Hall, IRCAM, King’s College, Cambridge, the Spoleto Festival USA, the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA. He has collaborated with ensembles such as Mark Morris Dance Group, Latitude 49, Apollo’s Fire, the Van Kuijk Quartet and has undertaken residencies at the University of California, San Diego, Princeton University, and IRCAM.

His 2020 recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations was praised as “remarkably special” (Gramophone), “nuanced and insightful” (BBC Music Magazine), “relentlessly beautiful” (WQXR), and “marked by a keen musical intelligence” (Wall Street Journal). In 2021, he premiered Omolu, a new work for amplified harp by Marcos Balter, commissioned by the Miller Theatre at Columbia University for their podcast series Mission: Commission. His last album, released in October 2022, features The Street, a new concert-length work for solo harp and text by Nico Muhly and Alice Goodman. In 2023, he made his debut in Paris with Josh Levine’s Anyway, a new work for harp and electronics commissioned by IRCAM. In 2024, he made his Baltimore debut with flutist Brandon Patrick George, and his Los Angeles and Bay Area debuts with Nico Muhly and Alice Goodman’s The Street at the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA and Cal Performances at the University of California, Berkeley. Early September 2024, he made his debut at the Gaudeamus Festival in Utrecht performing Lucy McKnight’s when i am among the trees. His Canadian debut was made by premiering a new chamber concerto by Jared Miller at Latitude 49’s Sound Atlas Festival in Calgary, and his Dublin debut included a new evening length work for harp and voice by Connor Way and Iarla Ó Lionáird. In 2024, he will premiered new works by Aida Shirazi and David Fulmer and undertake tours with the Van Kuijk Quartet, IRCAM, and Mark Morris Dance Group.

Alongside gambist Arnie Tanimoto, Parker is co-director of A Golden Wire, a period instrument ensemble based in New York. He has presented talks, performances and lectures on period instruments at the Smithsonian Collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Mellon University, Chatham Baroque, and the Royal Academy of Music, London. As a writer, he has been published in VAN Magazine, Early Music America Magazine, the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Raised in Tennessee, Parker began harp studies with his mother, Carol McClure. He served as organ scholar at King’s College, Cambridge before pursuing graduate studies at Oberlin and Juilliard. In 2014, he was awarded First Prize at the Sweelinck International Organ Competition.

Photo of Quatuor Van Kuijk by Svend Andersen
Photo of Parker Ramsay by Tatiana Daubek