As of 2025 Oregon has five main string quartets, four in Portland and one in Eugene. Among them, they comprise twenty or so of the state’s finest string players, people who also play in other configurations, including their own groups and various Oregon symphonies around the state, where more than a few are principals and assistant principals of their sections.

These are they:

• Delgani String Quartet (Anthea Kreston, Jannie Wei, Amanda Grimm, and Eric Alterman)
• Fear No Music (varies, but these days it’s usually Keiko Araki, Emily Cole, Kenji Bunch or Amanda Grimm, and Nancy Ives)
• Third Angle New Music (also varies, but lately it’s mostly been Ling Ling Huang, Greg Ewer, Wendy Richman, and Valdine Ritchie Mishkin)
• Pyxis Quartet (Ron Blessinger, Greg Ewer, Charles Noble or Maia Hoffman, and Marilyn de Oliveira or her husband Trevor Fitzpatrick)
• mousai REMIX (Emily Cole or Ruby Chen, Shin-young Kwon, Jennifer Arnold or Maia Hoffman, and Marilyn de Oliveira)

Couple of repeats there (Cole, de Oliveira, Ewer, Grimm, Hoffman); ChatterPDX is slowly evolving a stable quartet out of the dozen or so locals who’ve been playing the Beethoven cycle this year, most of whom play in one or more of these five quartets; and in a tangled bit of history the Pyxis Quartet actually used to be the 3A string quartet (before Blessinger left 3A for 45|| in 2018) – all of which shows just how tight-knit this little scene is. Of the five, three have performed the music of Pulitzer-winner and newishly-Oregonian composer Caroline Shaw just within the last couple of months, and the others are no strangers to her music. In October, 3A gave a repeat performance of Shaw’s Evergreen – which they commissioned and premiered back in 2020 – alongside poetry by former Oregon Poet Laureate Kim Stafford and music by, among others, violist Richman (read about the recent concert here).

When I spoke with Shaw back then, just before the concert and ensuing pandemic (no causal relationship is to be inferred), she had this to say about her string quartet music and Evergreen in particular:

”I always like writing string quartets. I try to write one at least once a year, to check in on what I’m into right now, because they seem to reflect that over the years. I like looking back at the little string quartet children.

”I usually tend to write 7-8 minutes pieces for quartet, but this new piece Evergreen is four movements, around 16-17 minutes. The movements are currently titled “Moss,” “Stem,” “Water,” and “Roots.” I wanted to write something that was directly inspired by nature, and – owning that and knowing that the piece is not sounding like a tree all the time – that’s my guide. In this particular case there’s a tree that I came upon during a walk in a forest on Galiano Island off the coast of Vancouver. The Pacific Northwest evergreen mossy forest, right after it snows so everything is wet, is such an amazing thing. Like when you take a walk and it slows you down in a beautiful way. It was very transforming.

”It’s about that landscape, and that’s all I can say about it. Each movement definitely jumps off from these particular textures. The moss one is my favorite currently. There’s a certain rough quality, there’s the aleatoric notation that I’ve tried to figure out how to use for so long, to write music where the layers feel as calm as I feel in that forest. My nightmare would be to write music that is calm, and for me to be calm, but for the players to not be calm – and that’s a really tricky thing. I’m trying to design freedom into the music so that there’s these pizzicato clusters, these harmonics, but you don’t feel like you’re trying to fit into this neat timescale.”

Take a listen for yourself to how that worked out:

Sponsor

And then last month, near the end of the OSO-spearheaded “Sounds Like Portland” festival, the two 45th Parallel Universe string quartets – Pyxis and Mousai – performed Shaw’s complete string quartet music (complete to date, that is) across three Portland venues (Polaris Hall, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, and Show Bar at Revolution Hall). Shaw herself was there, as were her partner-in-life-and-Ringdown Danni Lee Parpan, OSO Creative Chair Gabriel Kahane, Renegade Opera co-founder Madeline Ross, 45|| Executive Director and Mendelssohn’s owner Lisa Lipton, plus the various members of these quartets – that is, about half of what we consider to be Oregon’s classical music royalty.

Ever-roaming photojournalist Joe Cantrell was there to capture it. Joe says he “shot about 700 images while holding myself back,” opines that “our local talent is gushing excellence this year,” reports that “Lisa Lipton has announced that it was a great success and that there will be more like it,” and concludes “No wonder Ms. Shaw has a Pulitzer!”

All true, Joe, all true! And without further ado, here’s the visual report.

Sponsor

Sponsor

And the composer herself: