The Katarina String Quartet will be at Fifth Avenue Memorial Church on Monday evening for a 7 p.m. concert.--Submitted Photo
asmith@medicinehatnews.com
Monday will see a rising string quartet making their way to Medicine Hat for the final stop on their tour, bringing with them a blend of classical and modern music.
The Katarina String Quartet’s story begins at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University, where all four members were pursuing different degrees, says violist Celia Morin.
“We all bonded over a shared desire to play string quartet professionally, and we had a friend who put us together in a recital, and we got to play together,” said Morin. “After that, we just thought, you know, ‘Let’s go for this.’ We’ve been playing together ever since then.”
That was roughly two years ago, and the quartet has since been named as the current Graduate String Quartet in Residence at the Juilliard School. They have won various awards, including the Gold Medal and BIPOC Prize winners of the 2024 St. Paul Chamber Music Competition and first prize winners of the Canadian Music Competition.
As they’ve entered the international competitive circuit, the learning curve has been fierce, but Morin says they’ve felt ready to rise to the challenge and continue to grow as individual performers and as a quartet.
As one of the members of the group grew up in Calgary, the quartet has been on a small tour of Alberta, and will be arriving at Fifth Avenue Memorial Church on Monday evening. Morin herself has not been to the city since she was young, and looks forward to getting to know it and its residents during her visit.
The concert will be suitable for listeners of all ages with works by Haydn, Beethoven and living Canadian composer Vivian Fung.
“The atmosphere we always try to bring when we play music is just that feeling of playing music for people in a comfortable space, instead of maybe that concert-hall feeling or something overly formal,” said Morin. “We just want to feel like we’re sharing music between people at the end of the night, and we just hope that we can share it in a way that makes everyone feel that it speaks to them.”
The concert begins at 7 p.m. Entry is by donation, with rush seating.
