Ensō String Quartet
US-based string quartet
The Ensō String Quartet was a US-based string quartet. Formed in 1999, it released three CDs on the Naxos Records label, one of which was nominated for a "Best Chamber Music Performance" Grammy award. It won a number of competitions, including the 2003 Concert Artists Guild, 2004 Banff International String Quartet Competition, and the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition.
Members
Maureen Nelson, violin I
Ken Hamao, violin II
Melissa Reardon, viola
Richard Belcher, cello
Biography
Shortly after the group's inception at Yale University in 1999, Ensō had success at the Banff International String Quartet Competition and won the Concert Artists Guild International Competition. Strad Magazine called Ensō's debut recording "an auspicious start to their recording career" and its recording of Ginastera's quartets was nominated for a Grammy Award, with Music Web International calling it "playing of jaw-dropping prowess revealing masterpieces of the 20th century quartet literature". The disc was selected as one of Music Web's Recordings of the Year for 2009.
In the 2009/10 season the Ensō won a Chamber Music America Commissioning Grant with composer Kurt Stallmann for a new piece for string quartet and electronics. Since the quartet's inception in 1999, new music featured prominently – from winning the Piece-de-Concert prize at the Banff Competition for the best performance of the commissioned piece to premiering Joan Tower's Piano Quintet to making premiere recordings released on Albany Records of works by composers Anthony Brandt and Karim al-Zand.
The Ensō Quartet's members also taught and coached chamber music. Institutions where they held substantial teaching or performing residencies include the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (2008/09), the Boston University Tanglewood Institute (2006-08), Interlochen Adult Amateur Chamber Music Camp (2007–present), and Rice University (04-06), where the quartet's members served as Guest Lecturers in String Quartet.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5380036. VIAF identifies the subject as 312738925. The Library of Congress control number is no2006080488. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1999, 2003, 2004 and 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ensō String Quartet” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.