eos guitar quartet

The Eos Guitar Quartet, named in honour of the ancient Greek goddess of dawn, combine some of the best Swiss virtues, namely democracy, precision and linguistic diversity. The latter extends to their instrumental work: apart from classical music, each member of the quartet has a passionate interest in other musical styles, either contemporary music, folk music from the deep south of Italy, world music, jazz, rock or flamenco.

The Quartet do not talk about the much-lauded Swiss democracy, preferring to demonstrate it: there is no leader, nor a rank of first guitarist. Although not always so easy as a process, it proves in the end to be one of the ensemble’s greatest strengths: diversity of sounds, colourfulness, and surprising musical twists. These four musicians together produce an innovative whole comprising an interweaving of music and precision. Precision not for its own sake, but always at the service of art, either in their own chamber-music projects or when working together with great interpreters of other musical styles.

Marcel Ege, Martin Pirktl, David Sautter and Michael Winkler formed the Eos Guitar Quartet in 1988. Its roots go back to their time at the Zurich Conservatoire, where they got to know each other. They have been working together for more than 20 years and have turned what appears to be a limitation into a real virtue: they compensate for the lack of original scores with their own ingenious transcriptions and compositions and by commissioning works from other composers.

Their practice of doing everything themselves finally led to the founding of their own publishing house, the Eos Guitar Edition, in 2005. Apart from new CDs, it has also produced the solo projects of the four musicians. And their first two recordings, now out of stock, have also been reissued under this label.

A selecton of festivals:

Córdoba, Madrid, Sevilla, Caracas, Havanna, Rabat, Rotterdam, Ludwigsburg, Ansbach, Bari, Moskau, Davos, Gstaad, Montreux, Tonhalle Zürich, Expo 02, Tricastin, Lyon, Nürnberg, München, Bukarest, Düsseldorf, Flims, Liechtensteiner Gitarrentage, Plovdiv, jazznojazz Zürich, Belgrad, in guitar winterthur, Iserlohn