Gershwin Piano Quartet

The Gershwin Piano Quartet is a formation of four pianists performing their own arrangements of classics from numerous musical traditions on four grand pianos. Their musical approach combines classical virtuosity with a jazz-based improvisatory idiom. The concerts of the Gershwin Piano Quartet run the whole gamut from lyrical introspection to irresistibly pulse-driven music and have been met with thunderous acclaim around the world.

The central focus of the group lies in creating very personal visions of the selected pieces that exceed the limits of pure transcription to include recomposition, improvisation and remixing techniques.

André Desponds founded the Gershwin Piano Quartet in Zurich, Switzerland in 1996. In their first concerts the group concentrated mainly on the music of George Gershwin, which still features prominently in their repertoire. Over the course of the last years, the ensemble has constantly expanded its stylistic outlook to include music as diverse as Rimski-Korsakov’s «Scheherazade» in a recomposed version with multiple loops and extended piano techniques, a compressed two-movement version of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, a polytonal reworking of Astor Piazolla’s «Tango-Fugue» from «Maria de Buenos Aires», as well as a complete version of George Gershwin’s «Concerto in F» with many improvisations added on.

The Gershwin Piano Quartet has performed in numerous venues around the world such as the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival (Germany), the Piano Festival Ruhr (Germany), the KKL Lucern (Switzerland), the Tonhalle Zürich (Switzerland), the National Palace of Culture Sofia (Bulgaria), the National Center for the Performing Arts (China) and the Sala Sao Paolo (Brazil) amongst others.