Oliver Heath and
Cerys Jones – violins
Gary Pomeroy – viola
Christopher Murray – cello
Described by The Strad as giving ‘passionate performances that combine technical accomplishment with interpretative flair’, the Heath Quartet is rapidly emerging as an exciting and original voice on the international chamber music scene.
Recipients of the 2012 Royal Philharmonic Society Young Artists Award and the 2012 Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Ensemble Prize, the Quartet has performed at many major festivals and venues throughout Europe including the Barbican, Bridgewater Hall, Sage Gateshead, Queen’s Hall Edinburgh, the Musikverein, Esterhazy Palace, Konzerthaus Berlin and Vara Konserthus (Sweden) as well as the Schwetzinger and Kissingen Winterzauber festivals. Over the last year highlights have included debuts at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and DeSingel Arts Centre in Antwerp, recitals with Michael Collins in Germany and Austria, appearances at the Salisbury, Peasmarsh, Mecklenberg-Vorpommern and Spitalfields festivals, as well as several concerts recorded for BBC Radio 3. Other artists the quartet has collaborated with include Ian Bostridge, Edgar Meyer, Stephen Hough, Lawrence Power, the Tokyo Quartet and Colin Currie, and the composers Sofia Gubaidalina, Steve Mackey and Brett Dean.
The Quartet performs regularly at Wigmore Hall where future engagements include complete cycles of both the Tippett and Bartok quartets and a collaboration with Anna Caterina Antonacci. This year the quartet will make their debut at Carnegie Hall as part of a USA tour, return to perform at the Concertgebouw and Louvre, appear onstage in Calixto Beieto’s Fidelio at the London Coliseum, and tour Mexico. The Quartet are members of faculty at Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
The Heath Quartet were 1st prize winners at the Tromp international competition in 2008, and were selected by YCAT in the same year. In 2011 they undertook two complete Beethoven cycles at the Fàcyl Festival in Salamanca, Spain and at Greyfriars Church in Edinburgh, for which they received a Bank of Scotland Herald Angel Award. They have also been awarded by the Borletti-Buitoni Trust.
The Heath Quartet was formed in 2002 at the Royal Northern College of Music under the guidance of Dr. Christopher Rowland and Alasdair Tait, with whom they continued their studies at the Reina Sofia in Madrid. They were Leverhulme Junior Fellows at the RNCM from 2008 to 2010, and Senior Fellows at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama from 2010 to 2012. The Quartet have undertaken residencies at the Banff Centre in Canada and the Britten-Pears School, Snape Maltings, and have studied at IMS Prussia Cove with András Schiff and Erich Höbarth. Other teachers have included Ferenc Rados, Isabelle Charisius and members of the Lindsay, Smetana, Takacs and LaSalle Quartets.