The Tansman Cello Quartet, named after the Polish composer Alexandre Tansman, started life in 2010 from the meeting of four musicians from three different countries: Marinela Doko (Albania), Fernando Lima de Albuquerque (Brasil), Didier Poskin (Belgium) and Karel Steylaerts (Belgium) during the Violoncelles en Folie Festival in the Hautes-Alpes.
Since then they have performed regularly in France and abroad: at the Festival Messiaen (Pays de la Meije), Servais Society (Halle, Belgium), Salle Cortot (Paris) and have been invited as the resident ensemble at the Violoncelles en Folie Festival since 2011.
​ The quartet has now recorded their first CD for the Belgian label Antarctica with original works for cello quartet.
Their repertoire is highly eclectic and also includes adaptations of works from the Baroque period to the present day.
The ensemble takes its name from the Polish composer Alexandre Tansman (Lodz 1897 – Paris 1986). Tansman started composing at the age of 8. He had piano and composition lessons in his home town and later studied Law in Warsaw, while continuing his studies in counterpoint and composition at the conservatory. From 1919 his career developed in Paris, and it was from here that he discovered the world. He became friends with Charlie Chaplin, George Gershwin, Maurice Ravel and many others. Tansman composed more than 300 works for diverse groups and ensembles. He is considered to be a Neoclassicist, turning his back on Romanticism, and preferring order, clarity and sobriety. His Two movements for Four Cellos dates from 1935; it was played in that same year in Brussels as a world premiere.