The Cuareim Quartet is an unusual string quartet formed by violinists Rodrigo Bauzá and Federico Nathan, violist Olivier Samouillan and cellist Guillaume Latil. All four musicians come from diverse musical backgrounds and work as composers as well as performers. As a quartet they play original compositions, hoping to break new ground by confronting and combining their varied experience in different genres. They explore the musical traditions of all continents—including the language of jazz—while cultivating an atypical string sound.  

Rodrigo Bauzá and Federico Nathan met as young violin students in Uruguay back in 2002 and stayed in contact through the following years while moving to different European cities. They shared an interest in both classical and popular music and after spending ten years studying and building careers for themselves in both fields, they set out to find like-minded musicians in order to found a new kind of string quartet together. After meeting the French cellist Guillaume Latil, they founded the Cuareim Quartet in 2013 and started out by giving a series of concerts at the Festival Instrumenta in Oaxaca (Mexico).

Since then, they have given many concerts in France, Spain, Italy, Macedonia, Holland, Germany, Uruguay and Argentina, appearing in festivals like the Cosmo Jazz festival (2022) and the Dutch Double Bass Festival with Derrick Hodge (2021). While the focus of the four musicians is on contemporary jazz and improvised music, they eagerly embrace a wide variety of aesthetics and styles. The quartet’s first CD “Cinco,” recorded in 2015 with internationally acclaimed multi-instrumentalist Marcelo Moguilevsky, was warmly acclaimed by the press and elected “recording of the year” by the newspaper La Nacion in Argentina.

In 2016, the Cuareim Quartet was offered a unique opportunity to compose new pieces for string quartet and symphony orchestra, which they premiered with the Orquesta Nacional de Musica Argentina in Buenos Aires, and played again in 2018 at the Palau de la Música in Valencia, Spain and in 2022 at the European Orchestral Performing Institute – Fames in Skopje, Macedonia..

In 2019, they recorded their second CD, “Danzas,” with percussionist Natascha Rogers. “Danzas” is entirely made up of new compositions and arrangements by the four members of the quartet, inspired by traditional dances from France, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, the Balkans and the island of La Réunion. The record release tour was unfortunately interrupted by the pandemic, but they have since played that program all over Europe while working on their new project, A Jazz Story, which they will present to the public in february 2024.

The quartet is also very interested in passing on their experience to new generations and has given a master-class at the Berklee College of Music in Valencia (Spain) as well as in Italy, Macedonia and Mexico.