Hélène, Lucien, Mariel, and Andrée are siblings in the Werner Chamber Quartet. They were born and raised in Montana and study cello with Richard Aaron of the University of Michigan and the Juilliard School, and Hans Jørgen Jensen of Northwestern University. Each member of the quartet also studies piano with Brian Johnson and is a distinguished participant in the Royal Conservatory of Music’s piano program.
Members of the quartet have had private audiences with Laszlo Varga, Andres Diaz, Michel Strauss, Wolfgang Lehner, Bernard Greenhouse, Lluis Claret, Julius Berger, Harro Ruijsenaars, Steve Doane, Wendy Warner, and Robert Levin. They have soloed with numerous orchestras, including the Bozeman, Billings, and Great Falls Symphony Orchestras, and the String Orchestra of the Rockies. They have been enthusiastically received at Montana State University’s Guest Artist and President’s Fine Arts Series, St. Timothy’s Summer Music Festival in Georgetown Lake, Montana, the Music Guild in Los Angeles, the Congress of Luthiers in France, the Provincehuis in Groningen, Holland, Harvard University’s Arts First, and on National Public Radio’s From the Top. During the summers, the quartet studies and performs at festivals and venues abroad, including Peter de Grote Festival in Holland, La Ferme de Villefavard and Chateau Fonplégade in France, the Mittelfest in Cividale, Italy, and the Mozarteum International Summer Academy in Salzburg, Austria.
They are known to many in and around the Montana area for their contributions to important community organizations including the Rescue Mission for the Homeless and the Wyoming Girls School, and they have shared their music in support of the arts for the Emerson Cultural Center, the Equinox Theater Company, Shakespeare in the Parks, music seminars at Montana State University, and for numerous public schools, rural schools, and universities at home and abroad that encourage opportunities for young musicians.
Hélène (22) is a senior at Yale where she has played cello in the Yale Symphony Orchestra, viola da gamba in the Yale Temperament, and has performed in numerous chamber groups. She will be pursuing a masters in cello performance upon graduating from Yale. Lucien (21) is a junior at Harvard, where he is president of the Brattle Street Chamber Players. He was recently the winner of this year’s Harvard Bach Society Orchestra Concerto Competition, and was also elected as the 45th music director of the Harvard Bach Society Orchestra for its 2012-2013 season. Mariel (19), a 2011 U.S. Presidential Scholar, will be a freshman at Harvard in the Fall of 2012. She is currently enrolled in the Academy of the Music Institute of Chicago, studying cello with Hans Jørgen Jensen, piano with Alan Chow, and chamber music with Almita and Roland Vamos. Andrée (18) is a high school senior at the Bozeman Charter School in Montana, and as a recent winner of Montana Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition, performed the Dvořák Cello Concerto with the Bozeman Symphony Orchestra in December 2011.
The quartet plays three Cody Kowalski bows, an Andrew Carruthers’s cello, and three Frank Ravatin cellos, one of which was commissioned and owned by Bernard Greenhouse. In addition to their classical music repertoire, the Werner Chamber Quartet enjoys playing their own arrangements of Argentinian tangos, jazz combos, Broadway musicals, and occasionally they drop their acoustic cellos and pick up electric versions to perform their own arrangements of rock ‘n roll.