Joel Link, violin
Brian Lee, violin
Hezekiah Leung, viola
Camden Shaw, cello

Named one of the greatest string quartets of the last 100 years by BBC Music Magazine, the GRAMMY® nominated Dover Quartet has followed a “practically meteoric” (Strings) trajectory to become one of the most in-demand chamber ensembles in the world. The group’s awards include a stunning sweep of all prizes at the 2013 Banff International String Quartet Competition, grand and first prizes at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, and prizes at the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition.

Formed at the Curtis Institute of Music in 2008, when its members were just 19 years old, the Quartet draws from the musical lineage of both the Vermeer and Guarneri Quartets, but brings a youthful enthusiasm and musical conviction to the repertoire that is truly its own. The Strad recently raved that the Quartet is “already pulling away from their peers with their exceptional interpretative maturity, tonal refinement and taut ensemble.” Members of the Quartet have appeared as soloists with some of the world's finest orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic, Kansas City Symphony and BBC Concert Orchestra.

Having toured Europe several times, the quartet has already performed amongst others at London’s WigmoreHal l, at the Biennale in Paris, Beethoven-Haus Bonn, Philharmonie Cologne, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, in Regensburg, Munich, Salzburg, Geneva, Berlin, Frankfurt, Innsbruck, Brussels, at Schloss Esterházy, Kultursommer Nordhessen, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Schwetzinger Festspiele, Rheingau Musik Festival, Klosterkonzerte Maulbronn and at Dresdner Musikfestspiele. The Dover Quartet performed birthday concerts for pianists Emanuel Ax and the late Leon Fleisher in New York, London and other places. In recent seasons, invitations have taken the quartet to Wigmore Hall London, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, as well as Paris, Basel, Amsterdam, Geneva, the Philharmonie Essen, and the Schubertiade, among others. The quartet recently premiered Steven Mackey’s theatrical-musical work Memoir, alongside arx duo and actornarrator Natalie Christa. Other recent and upcoming artist collaborations include Ray Chen and the late Peter Serkin. Highlights in the concert calendar of the next season are concerts in Schwetzingen, the Wartburg Eisenach as well as in Copenhagen and Padua.

The Dover Quartet's debut CD with the quartets KV 589 and 590 and the string quintet KV 406 by Mozart - ahomage to the Guarneri Quartet's first recording - was followed by the recording of "Voices of Defiance" with quartets by Viktor Ullmann, Dmitri Shostakovich and Simon Laks. Their recording of the Schumann Quartets was released on the Azica label at the end of 2019 and has been nominated for a Grammy Award. The third volume CD of Beethoven's Complete String Quartets recording was released by Cedille Records in October 2022.

The Dover Quartet was a Graduate String Quartet-in-Residence at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music in Houston and received the Cleveland Award in 2015, the Lincoln Center’s Hunt Family Award and the Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2017. Since 2020 the quartet has been the Penelope P. Watkins Ensemble in Residence at the Curtis Institute of Music, alongside a residency at the Kennedy Center, amongst others.

The ensemble is named after the string quartet “Dover Beach” written by one of the most famous students of the Curtis Institute: Samuel Barber.

The Dover Quartet plays on the following instruments and proudly endorses Thomastik-Infeld strings.
• Joel Link plays a very fine Peter Guarneri of Mantua violin kindly loaned to him by Irene R. Miller
through the Beare’s International Violin Society.
• Bryan Lee: Riccardo Antoniazzi, Milan, 1904
• Hezekiah Leung: Jurgen Manthey, 2014
• Camden Shaw: Frank Ravatin, France, 2010