Biography

This remarkable recorder quartet was internationally noted for its ensemble's unsurpassed beauty of timbre, balance, precision, and agility, as well as for its adventuresome programming. The original group members were Daniel Brüggen, Bertho Driever, Paul Leenhouts, and Karel van Steenhoven, who formed the group while students at the Sweelinck Conservatory Amsterdam in 1978. In 2001, Leenhouts left the ensemble and Daniel Koschitzki, a first-prize winner in London's Moeck/SRP Solo Recorder Playing Competition, joined the group. Later, Driever's place was taken up by Andrea Ritter. The Amsterdam Loeki Stardust Quartet (sometimes abbreviated as A.L.S.Q.) created a repetoire that ranges from the traditional consort music of the Renaissance and Baroque periods (for example, its widely lauded 1999 recording of Bach's The Art of the Fugue) through contemporary and originally commissioned works (recorded on the CD Pictured Air and a published series of new music for the Moeck Verlag), even including the arrangement of a Stevie Wonder song with which the group won the 1981 Musica Antiqua Competition in Bruges. The group has a collection of over 100 Renaissance, Baroque, and modern recorders (ranging from an eight-inch sopranino to a nine-foot sub-contrabass) on which to draw to create unique timbres. The A.L.S.Q. toured extensively throughout the world and appeared in festivals in Berlin, Utrecht, London, Barcelona, Moscow, Sapporo, Boston, San Antonio, and Berkeley, and the group appeared regularly in North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. In 2007, the group decided to end its career, but rejoined in 2008 just for a 30th anniversary celebration.