The Cosman Keller Art & Music Trust

The Cosman Keller Art & Music Trust has been supporting YCAT artists since 2020. After an initial donation to help artists during the Covid-19 lockdowns, the Trust began a long-term partnership with YCAT in 2021 to underpin YCAT’s work in supporting a string quartet, known as the Hans Keller Artist. In addition, the Trust is supporting the creation of new works via the YCAT Composer Fellowship, also in memory of Hans Keller.

Hans Keller (1919-1985) was a musician, writer and broadcaster who was a dominant part of the British musical scene in the forty years that followed the second world war. Among many other things, Keller played a crucial role in the revival of the string quartet in Britain, coaching most of the leading ensembles of the time and, through his 20 years at the BBC, broadening awareness of the repertoire, developing performance opportunities and educating the audience for chamber music. He inspired many composers to write new works in this form, including Benjamin Britten, who dedicated his own Third Quartet to Keller, who, he said, “knows more about the string quartet, and understands it better, than anybody alive”.

In 1984, Keller was on the jury for the very first YCAT final auditions, and despite being mortally ill he returned to judge the finalists in 1985, just weeks before he died.