Kuijken String Kwartet

first generation:
Wieland Kuijken (1938) obtained a Higher Certificate in cello at the Royal
Conservatory of Brussels in 1959. Taught himself to play viola da gamba and 17th and 18th century performance practice. Performed avantgarde music until the late seventies. He often worked together with his two brothers Barthold and Sigiswald and harpsichordist
Robert Kohnen. He is much sought after as a teacher and as a cellist known for his interpretation of Bach's solo suites. He also occasionally works as a conductor.
Sigiswald Kuijken (1944) studied violin at the Conservatories of Bruges and Brussels. Like his brother Wieland he came in touch with early music at a very young age and mastered the specific 17th and 18th century performing techniques and interpretation conventions. He had a decisive influence on the approach to violin music, as his newly introduced technique of playing baroque violin has been adopted by many musicians since the early 1970s. He also performed a lot of avantgarde music until the late 1970s and early music with his brothers Wieland and Barthold, Gustav Leonhardt, Robert Kohnen, Anner Bylsma, Frans Brüggen, René Jacobs and others. In 1972 he founded the baroque orchestra La Petite Bande which performed numerous concert tours throughout the world and made a large number of recordings. In 1986 he established the Two Generations Kuijken. Sigiswald Kuijken taught baroque violin at the Royal Conservatories in The Hague and Brussels. In February 2007, Sigiswald Kuijken has received an honorary doctorate of the Catholic University of Leuven.
Marleen Thiers (1945) studied with Arthur Grumiaux and Maurice Raskin at the Conservatory of Brussels. Just like her husband, Sigiswald Kuijken, she immediately showed a special penchant for period instruments and performance practice. She plays first viola in La Petite Bande and is a cofounder and viola player with the Two Generations Kuijken.

second generation:
Sara Kuijken (1968) studied viola at the Royal Conservatory of Music in
Brussels, where she obtained a 1st prize in 1989 and in 1992 the Higher Certificate magna cum laude. At the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam she obtained a degree as a performing musician in 1995. Together with seven other musicians, she founded the Oxalys chamber music ensemble, in which she played viola and served as artistic director
until 1998. This ensemble released two CDs, with impressionist and with contemporary Russian chamber music. Her father Sigiswald Kuijken gave her some baroque violin instruction in 1994. She is a regular participant in La Petite Bande. Since the academic year 2005-06 she has been assistant instructor of baroque violin at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Brussels.
Veronica Kuijken (1978) started to play piano at age six and violin at age eight. She went to the Brussels conservatory at the age of 16 in the piano class of Daniel Blumenthal. There she took her master's degree in piano cum laude in June 1999. After two years of violin lessons, and privately tutoring for seven years she continued her studies in London and obtained a master's degree in violin in September 1998 (via the Central Examining Committee of the Flemish Community). She has been studying at the Musikhochschule in Winterthur
(Switzerland) since October 1999. In 1997 Veronica was selected as a violinist in the European Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, conducted by Iván Fischer, Semyon Bychkov and Pierre Boulez. Alongside her studies, Veronica Kuijken and her sister Marie (soprano and pianist) have performed since 1993 as the 'I Pulcini' duo. Veronica has regularly played with the Kammerorchester Basel since 2000, and holds a part-time position as piano accompanist with the Conservatory of Music in Lausanne and as harpsichord accompanist in the Geneva Conservatory.