Benyounes Quartet

Zara Benyounes violin 1 Emily Holland violin 2

Tetsuumi Nagata viola Kim Vaughan cello

Winners of the 2012 1st International Sándor Végh String Quartet Competition in Budapest, plus four special prizes including Best Interpretation of a Bartok Quartet; the Benyounes Quartet is gaining a reputation as one of the most engaging, dynamic and successful young quartets to have emerged from the UK in recent years.

Formed in 2007 at the Royal Northern College of Music, the Benyounes Quartet went on to win the Royal Philharmonic Society's prestigious Julius Isserlis Scholarship, funding their studies with Professor Gábor Takács-Nagy at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Genève. Here they won the conservatoire's most esteemed Prix d'Excellence.

The quartet held the Richard Carne Junior Fellowship at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance for two years and has held a residency at Bangor University. As Park Lane Group Young Artists, the quartet have given debut recitals at the Purcell Room and Wigmore Hall.

Notable performances include concerts at St-Martin-in-the-Fields, LSO St Luke's, Festival Quatuors à Bordeaux, Canterbury Festival, West Cork Chamber Music Festival, Bellerive Festival, Gstaad New Year Festival, North Norfolk Festival, Mondsee Festival and Manchester's Bridgewater Hall. In 2010, they performed a new collaborative work by young British composer Charlotte Bray in Verbier Festival, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence and Aldeburgh Festival. The quartet has studied with Gábor Takács-Nagy, Eberhard Feltz, Andras Keller and Quatuor Ebène, and attended IMS Prussia Cove and the Britten-Pears International Academy of String Quartets.

The quartet continues to broaden its repertoire by initiating collaborative chamber music and cross-arts projects, and has founded Quercus Ensemble, a mixed chamber music group based in Northern Ireland. The quartet works regularly with Shobana Jeyasingh Dance and has collaborated with award-winning jazz group Empirical, performing in the London Jazz Festival at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and appearing on their album, Tabula Rasa.