Prizewinners of the 2024 Royal Over-Seas League competition and 2025 City Music Foundation artists, the award-winning Kyan Quartet brings together four exceptional musicians from the United Kingdom, the United States, China, and France. Established in 2020, the quartet enjoys a busy and vibrant career, having performed across Europe and Asia in venues including Wigmore Hall, St. Martin in the Fields, Beethoven-Haus Chamber Music Hall, Shanghai Opera House and Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra Hall.
As Tunnell Trust award holders, the quartet will tour across Scotland this February. They are looking forward to joining the Carducci Quartet in their Barbican Shostakovich cycle project, with three performances spanning March to May at Milton Court. Other upcoming highlights include debuts at St. John Smith Square, Barnes Music Society and Canterbury Music Club. Continuing their ongoing collaboration with Ahmed Dickinson, the Kyans will return to Conway Hall this November for a programme of guitar quintets. The quartet are grateful to be supported by Le Dimore del Quartetto.
The Kyans have held residencies with the Britten Pears Young Artist Programme and the South Downs Summer Music International Festival, and won places on prestigious courses, including the International Beethoven Masterclass in Bonn, Jeunesses Musicales Deutschland’s 68th International Chamber Music Campus and Chamber Studio’s inaugural Hans Keller Forum. Through these they have received coaching from all members of the Belcea Quartet, Heime Müller, John Myerscough, Jana Kuss, Alasdair Beatson and Péter Nagy. The quartet has also been coached by members of the Carducci, Doric, Heath, Jerusalem and Pavel Haas Quartets. They are currently being mentored at the Mozarteum University by Cibrán Sierra Vazquez, Rainer Schmidt and William Coleman.
Widening musical participation and access is central to the quartet’s artistic mission. They are Live Music Now artists, sharing their love of participatory music-making in care homes and SEND schools. The quartet give masterclasses and work with young composers at the Junior Royal Academy of Music. As the 2022/23 fellows of the Open Academy/Wigmore Hall Learning Programme, they appeared regularly on the Wigmore Hall stage and in community settings, sharing music with families, young children, and those living with dementia. A particular highlight was leading workshops across six primary schools in Tower Hamlets, in partnership with Spitalfields Music.
The Kyan Quartet pride themselves on championing new music. They have given Wigmore premieres of commissioned pieces by Florence Anna Maunders and Zhenyan Li, and
performed Symphony for String Quartet and Forest by Jacob Fitzgerald at the 2022 Timber Festival, featuring 200 school children singing alongside the quartet. The Kyans collaborated with Cem Güven to record his 2023 quartet Atmospheric Manipulations, and will feature on Ben Nobuto’s upcoming debut album.
Meet the Kyans
Naomi Warburton
Sydney Mariano
Wanshu Qiu
Simon Guemy
© Kyan Quartet 2024
All artist photos by Ray Palo and Jessica Hu.