The Cramer Quartet

With period instruments and an invigorating historically informed approach, the Cramer Quartet brings uncommon warmth, transparency, and texture to Classical and early Romantic repertoire as well as commissioned works that explore and expand the sound world of gut strings. The quartet’s stylish, nuanced interpretations and visionary approach to programming stimulate dialogue around old and new works, inviting audiences to listen with fresh ears. 

Highlights of the past season include performances of The Seven Last Words Project— an immersive multimedia journey through Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ as reflected upon by seven diverse contemporary composers— at Five Boroughs Music Festival; the quartet’s debut at Music Mountain Summer Festival as the first period instrument ensemble to perform in the concert series 92 year history, and a residency at Festival de Música de Santa Catarina in Jaraguá do Sul, Brazil. This past spring, the Cramer Quartet launched Haydn: Dialogues, an ambitious multi-year cycle combining Haydn’s 68 string quartets with sixteen new commissions by composers of marginalized identities. Recent appearances include Boston’s Society for Historically Informed Performance and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s “Art in Tune” event— a multidisciplinary site-specific collaboration in which the CQ paired artwork from the museum’s galleries with a series of rarely heard works performed on a set of 18th-Century musical instruments from the MFA’s collection.

The Cramer Quartet is the recipient of a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Creative Engagement Grant, Chamber Music America’s Ensemble Forward Grant, and is generously supported by the Copland Foundation, and New York Council of the Arts. The ensemble takes its name from Wilhelm Cramer, a brilliant violinist who enjoyed a multifaceted career as London’s first major string quartet leader. Cramer is credited with popularizing a late 18th century violin bow which became the inspiration for the style of historical bows used by the Cramer Quartet.