# Bowmore Quartet Bio - EN

Bound by a shared obsession with the string quartet repertoire of the 20th and 21st centuries, the Bowmore Quartet met in 2025 around Luc Brewaeys' second string quartet, Bowmore, from which the ensemble takes its name. The name stayed because the music stayed with them, and as a reminder that a string quartet can take its work seriously without taking itself too seriously.

Based in Belgium, the quartet brings together Pieter Jansen, Véronique De Raedemaeker, Tony Nys and Francis Mourey, four musicians with distinct musical paths. For them, working closely with composers who are shaping the musical landscape of today and tomorrow is both a responsibility and a privilege.

Bowmore approaches contemporary music as part of a living tradition. Every work was new once, and every score carries traces of the time, place and people around it. The quartet is drawn to the extraordinary range of sound worlds that has shaped the repertoire of the 20th and 21st centuries, from major works to overlooked pieces and music still being written. 

Alongside its concert activity, the quartet has made regular recording sessions part of its practice, as a way of sharing the music of our time beyond the concert hall. Coming together in different spaces, Bowmore is gradually building an archive of string quartets by composers such as Boesmans, Kurtág, Glass, Brewaeys and Henderickx, alongside landmarks of the last century, forgotten gems and new commissions. These recordings are shaped from beginning to end by the quartet's multifaceted cellist, often with a surrealistic touch, and reflect the quartet’s wish to bring the music into direct contact with listeners.

The Bowmore Quartet solemnly promises to devote itself wholeheartedly to the music of yesterday, today and tomorrow: to understand the great, well-known masterpieces of the last hundred years down to the smallest detail, to dust off forgotten gems and to commission brand new work and thus make the already gigantic string quartet heritage just a little bit more gigantic.
