with guest artists Kenji Bunch, composer & viola, Toby Appel, viola, and Monica Ohuchi, piano

Kenji Bunch | The 3 G’s
Kenji Bunch | We’d Better Call for Backup (for 2 Violas)
Kenji Bunch | The Viola Burns Longer
Antonín Dvořák | String Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 97

The FSQ@USU 2026/27 Series opens by putting the viola—chamber music’s beloved middle voice—squarely in the spotlight. Composer and violist Kenji Bunch joins the quartet alongside his longtime mentor, renowned violist Toby Appel, for a program full of wit, virtuosity, warmth, and glorious low strings. Featuring three works by Bunch and culminating in Dvořák’s exuberant E-flat Major String Quintet, this is a celebration of an instrument that may not always demand center stage—but, as it turns out, burns longer.

with guest artists Will Hagen & Laura Ha, violins; Andrea Ashdown, viola; and Walter Haman, cello

February 9, 2027, 7:30 pm | Russell/Wanlass Performance Hall

Program:

Ludwig van Beethoven | String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 127
Georges Enescu | String Octet, Op. 7

What can you program after late Beethoven?

The FSQ continues its journey toward a complete cycle of Beethoven’s late string quartets in fall 2028 with Op. 127—a work of extraordinary spaciousness, intimacy, and invention. And then: Enescu. Written when the composer was only nineteen, his monumental String Octet seems to ask how much farther eight string players can possibly go. Sweeping, youthful, virtuosic, and almost orchestral in scale, it is one of the rare works audacious enough to follow late Beethoven.

March 26, 2027, 7:30 pm | Russell/Wanlass Performance Hall

Program:

Brittany J. Green | Lead Me Home (2021)
Aakash Mittal | Living Memory for string quartet & film (2026)
Ludwig van Beethoven | String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132

The FSQ@USU season closes with three works that reach toward memory, home, loss, and what endures.

Brittany J. Green’s Lead Me Home, for strings and electronics, draws upon Thomas Dorsey’s hymn “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” allowing fragments of familiar material to emerge through shimmering strings and ethereal electronic sound. Aakash Mittal’s Living Memory, written for the Fry Street Quartet in response to the creatures and habitats of the Sundarbans, returns in a newly expanded version incorporating film, heard here for the first time.

At the center of Beethoven’s Op. 132 lies one of the most profound movements in the quartet repertoire: his Heiliger Dankgesang—a “Holy Song of Thanksgiving” written after recovering from serious illness. Across centuries and vastly different sound worlds, these three works listen backward and forward at once, asking what we carry, what we lose, and what might extend beyond us.