Through innovative programming and audience-friendly concerts, the quartet strives to bring traditional and contemporary classical music to as broad an audience as possible.

The West End String Quartet is a fresh, young quartet based in Hartford. The Quartet came together in the fall of 2005 because of their shared passion for chamber music. Since then, WESQ has been entertaining audiences across New England with an exciting and varied repertoire of chamber music. Current members are Jessica Meyer and Sarah Washburn, violins, John Biatowas, viola, and Carlynn Savot, cello.

Highlights of the past year include the culmination of the Ives Vocal Marathon Project and the premiere of James T. Lindsay's Second String Quartet.

Ardent advocates of contemporary music, the quartet has premiered several new works, including Ruby Fulton's "The Slow Revolution". Repeat performances of this work were sponsored by an Encore grant from the ACF. In the summer of 2007, the quartet performed at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival in Colorado as part of the Young Artist Program. In addition to concerts with festival musicians, the quartet presented outreach and childrens concerts.

In past seasons, the quartet placed runner up in the MTNA Chamber Music Competition in Pittsburgh, and gave repeat performances at St. James's Episcopal Church in West Hartford, The Universalist Church of West Hartford, on the River Crossings Concert Series, and with the Arts Institute of Western Maine. The quartet also collaborated with Weselyan University faculty and members of Bang on a Can All-Stars and Connecticut Opera on the "Ives Vocal Marathon" series at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT.

WESQ strives to bring new and uncommon repertoire to their concerts, pairing them with traditional works. Each concert includes spoken notes that give a personal perspective to each piece, making unfamiliar works accessible to new audiences as well as seasoned classical music-lovers.

Contemporary Works:

Barber: String Quartet
Bolcom: Graceful Ghost Rag and Incineratorag
Copland: Movement, for string quartet
Debussy: String Quartet
Edward Diemente: "Softshoe" (from String Quartet No. 3)
Lukas Foss: String Quartet in G
Ruby Fulton: "The Slow Revolution" (sponsored by an ACF Encore grant)
Gershwin: Lullaby
Jimi Hendrix: Purple Haze
Arthur Hernandez: Movements I and II from String Quartet No. 1
Ives: String Quartet No. 1
Ives: Aeschylus and Sophocles (for quartet with soprano and piano)
Ives: Scherzo
Ives: Hymn (quartet with bass)
Steve Kornicki: Horizontal Color Forms #15
James T. Lindsay: String Quartet No. 2
David Macbride: A Muse
Astor Piazzolla: Four, for Tango
Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 1
Stravinsky: Concertino
Webern: Langsamer Satz


and works by:

Beethoven, Borodin, Dvorak, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schubert and Wolf.