The Tasman String Quartet (violinists Anna van der Zee and Jennifer Banks, violist Christiaan van der Zee and cellist Miranda Wilson) is New Zealand's youngest full-time chamber music ensemble. Founded in Wellington in 2006, the quartet took its name from the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, the first European to sight New Zealand.
The Tasman String Quartet has a busy schedule of concerts in New Zealand and the United States. Recent performances include several New Zealand tours, including two for Chamber Music New Zealand, a self-organized concert series at Grace Lutheran Church, Boulder, Colorado, and a month-long residency at Auburn University, Alabama, where the TSQ performed all over the state, including outreach concerts which introduced over 2000 Alabamian schoolchildren to classical music.
Competition successes include the Honorable Mention Prize in the finals of the 2008 Plowman Chamber Music Competition in Missouri, the Jeremy Rutenberg Prize Prize for the outstanding performance of a Haydn quartet at the 2008 Rutenberg Chamber Music Competition in Florida, and the Hamer Tribe Trust Prize for the outstanding performance of a post-1989 composition at the 2009 Asia-Pacific Chamber Music Competition in Australia. Future competition plans include the International Chamber Music Competition Hamburg in September 2009.
The Tasman String Quartet has always sought to apprentice itself to the world's great quartets. Their earliest mentors were the members of the New Zealand String Quartet. Between 2007 and 2009, the TSQ held a residency at the University of Colorado as assistants to the Takács Quartet, and will soon take up a new position at the University of Illinois as assistants to the Pacifica Quartet. The TSQ has also studied with members of the American, Cleveland, Cavani, Emerson, Juilliard and Ying Quartets at the Aspen Music Festival and School, with the Juilliard Quartet at the Juilliard String Quartet Seminar, and with members of the Cleveland, Schoenberg and St. Lawrence Quartets at the Banff Centre in Canada.
The members of the Tasman String Quartet gratefully acknowledge the generous present and past sponsorship of New Zealand philanthropist Christopher Marshall, Chamber Music New Zealand, the Stout Trust, Creative New Zealand, the Public Trust, the Takács Society and the University of Colorado.
