Winners of the 2014 Royal Overseas League Ensemble Competition, the Solem Quartet were brought together in 2011 by their studies at the University of Manchester, where they take their name from the University motto “arduus ad solem", meaning “striving towards the sun”.
The quartet enjoy a busy concert schedule at venues across the UK including Wigmore Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Bridgewater Hall and Holywell Music Room, as well as performing internationally in several European countries. As an acknowledgement to their name, the Solem Quartet began by learning Haydn's op 20 "Sun" Quartets. Now their repertoire expands widely from early Haydn to living composers such as Emily Howard, whose quartet ‘Afference’ they recently performed in a BBC Proms Extra broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. They have recorded two CDs of 20th Century British music for Divine Arts record company. They are 2016/17 Park Lane Group Artists and have given recitals at Kings Place, St John's, Smith Square and St Martin-in-the-fields in this year as part of the PLG recital series. In 2016 they were also selected as Tunnell Trust Artists, through which they will be touring Scotland in 2018.
The Solem Quartet have benefited from inspirational teaching from a number of the world's greatest chamber musicians including Gábor Takács-Nagy, Miguel da Silva, Peter Cropper, Thomas Riebl and Hatto Beyerle. They have attended the European Chamber Music Academy and the National Youth String Quartet Academy as well as courses with the Chilingirian, Dante and Maggini Quartets, and in January 2015 they undertook a two-week chamber music residency with Simon Rowland-Jones in Aldeburgh. The quartet were delighted to have been selected for the prestigious ChamberStudio Mentorship 2014/2015, which allowed them to study intensively with the internationally renowned cellist Christoph Richter at Kings Place.
Free recital (retiring collection)