Kantos Quartet
KANTOS QUARTET
Sarah Sew, violin
Hugh Murray, violin
Alexandros Koustas, viola
Aoife Burke, cello
Sarah Sew, violin
Sarah Sew is recipient of the Maisie Lewis Young Artists’ Fund Award which supported her recital debut at the Wigmore Hall, the Emanuel Hurwitz Award for an outstanding UK violinist and the J & A Beare Prize. As a recitalist and chamber musician, she has performed at Zermatt Festival, Switzerland; Bolzano Festival, Italy; Grafenegg Festival, Austria; Cheltenham Festival, UK; and the International Musicians Seminar, Prussia Cove. Sarah is Professor of Violin and Head of Chamber Music at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, where she founded ChamberFest Dublin which is now in its sixth year. Sarah is Leader of the Irish National Opera Orchestra and has appeared as Guest Leader of the National Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, English Symphony Orchestra, Balkan Chamber Orchestra, and the Human Rights Orchestra in Lucerne amongst others. Previous positions include Concertmaster of the European Union Youth Orchestra and Principal First Violin of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. Sarah studied with Maurice Hasson and Howard Davis at the Royal Academy of Music in London and Friedemann Eichhorn at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt Weimar, Germany. In 2018, she was awarded Associate of the Royal Academy of Music. She appears frequently on competition juries and returned to Weimar in 2022 as a jury member for the International Louis Spohr Competition. Sarah plays an Italian violin by Gennaro Gagliano c.1760.
Hugh Murray, violin
Hugh Murray is a graduate of the Cork School of Music, where he studied with Ruxandra Colan-Petcu. He currently lives and works in Dublin as a member of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. He has also enjoyed appearances with the John Wilson Orchestra at festivals, the BBC Proms, and on their UK tour. Recent orchestral work includes with Sinfonia of London and Irish National Opera. Hugh has also been heard as the violinist on the UK touring shows Les Misérables and Book of Mormon. Chamber music appearances include Strauss’ Metamorphosen at the St. Endellion Festival, Cornwall, Brahms’ Horn Trio at the Juilliard School, New York, national tours with the Ficino Quartet and Picorlino Trio, performances with Crash and Kirkos Ensembles, and premiering Ronan Guilfoyle’s new work, Allies, alongside jazz musicians David Liebman and Richie Beirach at the National Concert Hall, Dublin.
Alexandros Koustas, viola
Alexandros Koustas was recently appointed as Principal Violist of the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland. He is also Principal Violist of the English National Ballet Philharmonic and a member of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. Alexandros studied the violin and viola at the Royal Academy of Music, and during his studies was awarded both of the institution’s viola prizes. In 2009 he was a resident artist in the Banff Centre, Canada, where he performed as a soloist and chamber musician. He was also a prize winner in the 2006 Lionel Tertis Viola Competition. He has appeared as a guest principal with the BBC Concert Orchestra, the CBSO, LPO, BSO, and other ensembles. In 2020, Alexandros recorded the Skalkottas Concerto for Violin, Viola and Wind Orchestra with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Aoife Burke, cello
Irish cellist Aoife Burke leads a diverse career as a recitalist, chamber musician, orchestral player, curator and producer. Selected by The Arts Council as a recipient of a Next Generation Artist Bursary 2020, Aoife is a member of the Opalio Piano Trio and the Kantos String Quartet, supported by the National String Quartet Foundation.
An avid chamber musician, Aoife has collaborated with notable artists including Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Arto Noras and Richard Watkins, and groups such as The Vanbrugh, the Navarra String Quartet, ConTempo String Quartet and the Gavin Bryars, Kirkos, Ficino and Crash Ensembles, performing at numerous international music festivals, including the National Concert Hall’s Chamber Music Gathering, the NCH Perspectives and Panorama Series, West Cork Chamber Music Festival, Music in Drumcliffe, New Music Dublin, Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte di Montepulciano, the Aurora Chamber Music Festival (Sweden) and the Clandeboye Festival, where she was awarded the Special Festival Prize. Her love for chamber music was fostered, in tandem with many other influences, during a Chamber Studio mentorship with Richard Lester at King’s Place, London. She has appeared in recital all over Ireland, including as part of the Crawford Art Gallery’s Summer Lunchtime Concert Series, Music for Wexford Series, Castletown House Concert Series, Sundays@Noon Series at The Hugh Lane Gallery, NUIG’s Arts in Action Series (in association with Music for Galway) and the Galway Music Residency’s 3 Kinds of Music Series, among others. She currently holds a residency at the Triskel Arts Centre in Cork City, where she the Spotlight Chamber Music Series, which she founded in 2017. Aoife’s numerous national prizes and awards include the RTÉ Lyric FM Award, Hazel de Courcy Lewis Cup, Bach Prize and Clyde Twelvetrees Cup at Feis Ceoil, Dublin and the Capuchin Order Perpetual Cup and Bursary at Feis Maitiú, Cork. Her début with the New York Concerti Sinfonietta in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in 2016 was described as “a thing of beauty…intelligent, poised, and refined”. (The Epoch Times)
Aoife studied at undergraduate level with Emma Ferrand at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, graduating in 2014 with a first-class honours Bachelor of Music degree and an LRSM Diploma in Performance with Distinction. For her third year, she undertook an Erasmus study exchange to the Folkwang Universität der Künste in Essen, Germany, where she joined the cello class of Christoph Richter and the chamber music class of Andreas Reiner. During the course of her studies, Aoife won the Raphael Sommer Music Scholarship and partook in the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme. She has participated in masterclasses with such renowned cellists as Raphael Wallfisch, Ralph Kirshbaum, Miklós Perényi and Frans Helmerson. Aoife subsequently obtained a Master’s Degree in Arts with Distinction from the CIT Cork School of Music, where she studied under Christopher Marwood, and pursued further study on the Performance Certificate Course (Corso di Perfezionamento) at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole, Italy, with Paolo Bonomini and Francesco Dillon.
She is grateful for the generous support of the EMI Music Sound Foundation, The Arts Council and Music Network’s Music Capital Scheme, funded by The Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. Music Network is funded by The Arts Council.