Portland String Quartet

🎻 Meet Katherine, our guest violinist for this weekend's concerts!

Katherine Liccardo is an active pedagogue and performer throughout Maine. She's been on the faculty of the Center for Preparatory Studies in Music at Queens College for 14 years, and has served on the faculty of Kneisel Hall’s Program for Maine Students and Berkshire Summer Music in Massachusetts.

She's performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and The Kennedy Center, and is currently committed to serving local communities in Maine. Katherine is the associate director of Vigorous Tenderness, an immersive outdoor concert series that amplifies marginalized voices in classical music and democratizes new/experimental music. She also works with Shelter Music Maine, an organization that brings music to unsheltered communities across the state.

Come see Katherine play with the PSQ on ✨Saturday, April 11 at Shaker Village or Sunday, April 12 at Portland Conservatory of Music!✨ Tickets in bio!

🌹 Our next concert cycle is a reflection on identity, personal voice, and cultural memory.

Featuring Iranian composer Aftab Darvishi's Daughters of Sol, Armenian composer Vartan Aghababian's Armenian Suite, and Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 2, Carried in Song takes us through rich cultural traditions and their expressions through harmony, texture, and melody.

You have two chances to hear this dynamic program! Tickets for both are on our website! 🔗🎶 www.psqmaine.org/57th-season

“Point of Departure” explored what it means to begin again — to leave one idea behind and step into another.

Chamber music like this feels vulnerable: no hiding, just listening and responding in real time.

Grateful. Onward. ✨

Happy Valentine's Day from the PSQ + Sophia! 💕

This coming week you have THREE chances to hear us play the super romantic, heart-on-your-sleeve Langsamer Satz, which Webern wrote after falling in love with his future wife 😍 (who happened to be his cousin but uh, we don't need to talk about that 😬)

🩷C U there QTs!🩷

Thurs 2/19 - Portland Museum of Art's Third Thursday, 6pm
Sat 2/21 - Mayo Street Arts, 7pm
Sun 2/22 - Brattleboro Music Center, 2pm

Join us on our next musical journey - Point of Departure ⛵

Featuring works by Prokofiev, Eleanor Alberga, Ken Benshoof, and Webern, this program explores moments where each composer met a juncture and charted new territory through their work.

You can hear us in Portland at Mayo Street Arts on 2/21 and in Vermont at Brattleboro Music Center on 2/22! Tickets for both on our website! 🎟️ psqmaine.org

Introducing our Telling Room Poets and Ambassadors! Tomorrow during the PSQ's winter solstice concert, In the Dark, poems by Avery Olson, Lily Jessen, Len Harrison, Anna Grey Bergstrom will be read by Len Harrison, Julietta (Jules) Vázquez and Perla Ingabire.

These poems were written in response to a workshop that the PSQ had at the Telling Room - we played some of Bach's Art of the Fugue (the feature piece of the concert) and chatted about the solstice, light, dark, and other themes.

We're so excited for these incredible works to be shared tomorrow at Mechanics' Hall!

🕯️In the Dark, the PSQ's annual winter solstice concert, features a new collaboration - poems written by students of The Telling Room will be read during the performance! These poems were inspired by a workshop the PSQ had at the Telling Room where we explored Bach's Art of the Fugue and themes of light, dark, and solstice.

Maine Public Classical will be featuring this collaboration on their upcoming Night Lights Broadcast, airing several times next week. You can also check out the PSQ's segment on this week's State of the Art with Heather McDougall and Emily Duncan Wilson here: https://www.mainepublic.org/show/state-of-the-art/2025-12-15/sunday-december-14-the-art-of-the-fugue-from-portland-string-quartet

Tickets for In the Dark are currently all reserved, but you can join the waitlist in case space opens up for this free concert on Dec 21st at Mechanics' Hall.

🎻 We are thrilled that Hannah Goldstick will be joining us for "In the Dark," our annual winter solstice concert!

Originally from Phoenix and now based in Jamaica Plain, Hannah is an enthusiastic chamber, orchestral, and solo violinist committed to exploring and sharing all types of music with her community. She is the founder of her own concert series, The Woodlawn Ensemble, and has taken the stage with artists including Nina Lee, Gilles Vonsattel, the Borromeo String Quartet and St. Lawrence String Quartet. She can be heard playing with Palaver Strings, Harvard Baroque, and other ensembles throughout New England.

🎧 When she's not concertizing with friends and colleagues, Hannah enjoys long walks and a good album.

Hear her play with the PSQ on December 21 at Mechanics' Hall in Portland!



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Just two days until our concert of Brahms and Beethoven with the wonderful Laura Kargul! 🤩 Head over to the link below to get your tickets to see us on Friday, October 17 at 7pm in the brand new Crewe Center for the Arts 🎹🎻

https://www.portlandstringquartet.com/event-details/the-psq-with-laura-kargul

🔥Our season premiere "Pure Imagination" was a hit!
In case you missed it (or want to relive the magic), we are delighted that Maine Stage from Maine Public will be broadcasting our live-recorded performance TONIGHT, September 24, from 8-10pm ET!
📻Support local radio and the PSQ by tuning in this evening!