Colin Currie Quartet
The Colin Currie Quartet was formed in 2018 to present bold and exciting music for percussion quartet, performed with dazzling virtuosity. Comprising Colin Currie, Owen Gunnell, Adrian Spillett and Sam Walton (also core members of the Colin Currie Group), the Quartet performs a variety of adventurous works, centring on those by Steve Reich and composers inspired by his influential writing. As some of the world’s leading solo, symphonic and chamber percussionists, each player of the Quartet brings a different and insightful slant to the art of chamber percussion performance to collectively present “a sonic display of startling magnificence” (Observer).
Recent highlights include performances at the NCPA Beijing, BBC Proms, Wigmore Hall, Auditorium Radio France, King’s Place, Cumnock Tryst, Norfolk & Norwich Festival, GAIDA Festival Vilnius, East Neuk Festival and Dublin Chamber Music Festival. Their programmes include works by Steve Reich, Julia Wolfe, Kevin Volans and Andy Akiho. The Colin Currie Quartet has premiered new works by Guillaume Connesson, Anna Meredith, Freya Waley-Cohen, Ben Nobuto and Aileen Sweeney. During the 23/24 season, the Colin Currie Quartet present a new programme at the Wigmore Hall, perform at the Royal Welsh College and give a Scottish tour supported by Chamber Music Scotland.
“The Colin Currie Quartet made Kings Place resound with radical rhythms and technical precision… This was rhythm as pure excitement, and it concluded a concert that richly explored the nature of music and rhythm.” Financial Times, January 2023
“A sonic display of startling magnificence. The centrepiece was Drumming, tuned bongos impeccably synchronised, slipping and looping in and out of phase... Julia Wolfe’s Dark Full Ride, crackling, eruptive, dangerous, made a noisy and spectacular finale.” Observer, January 2023
"I have described Currie and his friends as daredevils and super-heroes, for their bravura performances of Xenakis." Bachtrack
"In John Luther Adams’ Qilyaun, the performers stood at all four corners of the auditorium balcony, sending out waves of unruly noise through rolling crescendos and decrescendos... at times it felt as if we were caught in a storm swirling round a vast open landscape, while at others a more synchronised regular beat filled the room with a sense of ritual." Arts Desk
"the sight of these four black-shirted virtuosi was powerfully visceral, given the physicality involved and the heated communication between them... the performance was scintillating for its dextrous precision and intoxicating interaction... the Reich-like adrenalin rush of Julia Wolfe’s Dark Full Ride had a sense of artful exhilaration as this dazzling floor show powered towards its final thump." VoxCarnyx, April 2024