Kompass Quartet
The Kompass Quartet is a professional string quartet serving the NYC Metropolitan and surrounding areas. Upon their genesis in early 2023 while its members were studying at New York University, they committed themselves to the works of living and under-represented composers, as well as the making chamber music accessible and relatable to all audiences through new works, popular music, or classical favorites.
Comprised of Jessica Gehring and Jade Schoolcraft on violin, Matthew Ryan on viola, and Victoria Lin on cello, the name Kompass was chosen to reflect the diverse, multi-national origins of its members. In its performances, the quartet endeavors to highlight composers from outside the traditional classical canon, with a particular focus on female and living composers.
Having all worked with each other in differing formations, the quartet as it is now formed in each of their final semesters of study in Spring 2023, where they focused on Grazyna Bacewicz’s String Quartet No. 4, a work by a female composer who is little performed in the English speaking world. The quartet’s deep dive into this work inspired them to discover more works by women and people of colour; composers who are often excluded from the core repertoire, but who are no less deserving to be heard.
The success of this lead to the quartet being offered the 2023 Young Artist Residency with the Craftsbury Chamber Players during the summer of 2023, where they performed as part of their 2023 season in Burlington and Hardwick, Vermont. As part of this residency, the Kompass Quartet collaborated with The Bread and Puppet Theater in “Deaf Beethoven:” a performance of Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge Op 133, with seven “stretches” added by composer and audio engineer Charlie Morrow, where he highlights and expands upon the temporal contradictions inherent to the original work. This re-imagining of one of the toughest works in the quartet repertoire was performed weekly through all of July and August 2023, and will be recorded for future release.
The Kompass Quartet performs at corporate functions, providing a broad range of music arranged for string quartet, including but not limited to; classical, jazz, popular music, film and television soundtracks, and more. In addition, each of the Kompass Quartet’s members maintains active freelance careers in music performance and teaching.