In a career that spans five continents and includes many hundreds of concerts, the Ciompi Quartet has developed a reputation for performances of real intelligence and musical sophistication, with a warm, unified sound that allows each player’s individual voice to emerge. In recent years, the Ciompi Quartet has performed across the U.S. from Washington, California, Texas, Ohio, New York, Washington DC and New England; they have appeared abroad from China and Taiwan to France, Italy, Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Serbia and Albania. In 2026 the quartet made its fifth trip to China, where it has performed in over a dozen cities. In 2024 the Quartet performed in Vienna at a celebration of Arnold Schoenberg’s 150th anniversary. The Quartet has performed at festivals across the US, including the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, Eastern Music Festival and Highlands Chamber Music Festival, and at Monadnock Music in New Hampshire.
The Ciompi Quartet’s commitment to creative programming often mixes the old and the brand new in exciting ways. In 2024 the quartet engaged composers Alan Chan and Andrew Waggoner to write new works for string quartet and pipa, in a collaboration with pipa player Min Xiao-Fen titled “An American in Shanghai: Forgotten Stories.” Their extensive catalog of commissions includes many that the group continues to perform on tour. Close ties to composers such as Paul Schoenfield, Melinda Wagner, Stephen Jaffe and Scott Lindroth have produced important contributions to the repertoire, while their ties to younger composers, many of whom were in Duke’s PhD program in composition, continue to generate exciting new music. A 2025 concert in New York’s Merkin Hall featured four works by Duke colleagues Jaffe and Lindroth, also Anthony Kelley and John Supko. This coincided with the release of Ciompi’s first album in seven years, A Duke Moment, on the New Focus label.
Other recordings in the Ciompi Recording Catalogue are on Toccata Classics (a quartet by 19th century violin virtuoso Heinrich Ernst), and Naxos, which released “Journey to the West” by Chiayu Hsu; also on Naxos online is a recording of the quartets of Paul Schoenfield, including the popular “Tales from Chelm.” Numerous other discs are on the CRI, Arabesque, Albany, Gasparo, and Sheffield Lab labels, with music from Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, up through the present. All the Ciompi Quartet members are Professors at Duke, where they lead the string studios and chamber music program and perform across campus in traditional and non-traditional venues.