Who Are We?

Eva de Vries, Janell Yeo - violins :||: Rachel Maxey - viola :||: Felicity Smith - cello

“…They produced a robust tone and exhibited an immaculate togetherness…passion oozing from every muscle and sinew…”

“…adventurously scheduled and stylishly played…”

”…inspiring and compelling…giving a much more intimate feel – as if we were privileged friends sitting in on four people playing for their own pleasure – it was a joy to see, as well as hear, the empathy between the players”

“…a persuasive combination of delicacy and self-assurance… energetic and richly rewarding…”

“The richness and the drama of the playing was often truly memorable... What could be said with little doubt was that this was a quartet which was well on the way to being of the front rank, such was the finesse and fervour of the playing.”

The Bloomsbury Quartet was formed in September 2017, when Eva and Felicity met while chamber music speed dating. Rather than the usual first-date awkwardness, they wished the 20-minute time slot would never end. Two was great, but four is so much better; Janell and Rachel joined in and they have not looked back!

Since then, they have performed across the country at major festivals, concert series and venues, including Wigmore Hall, Petworth Festival, Leicester International Music Festival’s lunchtime concert series, Lake District Summer Music’s New Generation Artists Concerts, Stroud Green Festival, Huddersfield Music Society, Music at Oxford, and Skipton Music. The quartet have also won recognition as a 2018 Stroud Green Festival Ensemble Scheme Winner, 2019 St Martin-in-the-Fields Chamber Competition Finalist, 2019-20 Making Music Selected Artist, and in June 2019 made their nationwide debut live on BBC Radio 3’s primetime In Tune programme. Later that year in September 2019, the Bloomsbury Quartet was appointed Quartet-in-Residence of Goodenough College, London.

Eva, Janell, Rachel, and Felicity are passionate about inspiring and developing current and future generations of musicians and music-lovers — engaging new and existing audiences with a unique blend of creative and thought-provoking programming, innovative concert formats, and participatory projects. As the 2018-19 Wigmore Hall/Open Academy Fellowship Ensemble, the Bloomsbury Quartet played a major role in facilitating Wigmore Hall’s Learning programme, working with and positively impacting more than a thousand people of all walks of life across London and beyond.

The Wigmore fellowship culminated in a world premiere of Daniel Fardon’s Six Movements for String Quartet, commissioned especially for the Bloomsbury Quartet by the Royal Philharmonic Society and Wigmore Hall: the following year this piece won the 2020 Ivor Novello Composer Award’s Small Chamber category, praised as “a finely crafted work with a wonderful arc across the whole piece and beautiful sounds and harmonies.”

In spite of the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Bloomsbury Quartet still completed their first UK tour with ReCentred, a multimedia concert experience about the life and works of Dame Elizabeth Maconchy that ran from 2019-2023, supported by the Ambache Charitable Trust and RVW Trust. Along with overwhelmingly positive responses from audiences and organisers, the success of this immersive contextualisation project also led to Wigmore Hall’s commissioning of Pioneering Women, a 2022 spinoff concert experience for schools and families that highlighted other inspiring female composers.

During their studentship at the Royal Academy of Music, the Bloomsbury Quartet received coaching from Levon Chilingirian (Chilingirian Quartet) and Jon Thorne (Badke Quartet), as well as Hartmut Rohde, the Doric Quartet, Jim Sleigh, and Michael Bochmann. In March 2020 they were selected for ChamberStudio’s Mentorship scheme and received coaching with Richard Ireland.

As soloists, the members of the Bloomsbury Quartet won competition prizes in the Netherlands, Singapore and the UK. Individually, they are also recipients of the Marylebone Student Award, Howard Davis Scholarship, John Booth Prize, the HSBC Youth Excellence Award, and the Diana Award; all in recognition of their talent, dedication to music making and ability to communicate and share music with others. As orchestral musicians, they have played with the Britten Sinfonia, Rotterdam Philharmonic and Metropole Orchestra, and taken part in the CBSO String Training programme, Oxford Philharmonic Apprenticeship Scheme and Birmingham Royal Ballet Apprenticeship Scheme.