Carolina Weatherall

On Monday, Nomad Pizza transformed its side room into a concert hall, lining the space with wooden chairs that circled a black box stage lit in a lavender hue. Families and friends gathered under the string lights, awaiting the entrance of the Grammy Award-winning Ying Quartet.

“The family’s back! I love it,” Lorna Flynn, the Bowdoin International Music Festival board chair and opener for the quartet, said.

The show was the first of three chamber music performances in the “Nomad Series” hosted by the Bowdoin International Music Festival. Founded in 1964 by Lewis Kaplan and Robert K. Beckwith, then-chair of the Bowdoin music department, the festival is a nonprofit, joint performance series and education institute. Each summer, 250 students from over 20 countries gather on Bowdoin’s campus for a six-week-long study of solo and chamber music with guest artists and faculty. The Nomad Series features the Ying Quartet, a trio of siblings Janet, Phillip and David Ying, accompanied by friend Robin Scott, with Phillip on viola, Scott and Janet on violin and David on cello.

Monday night’s performance began with “Italian Serenade” by Hugo Wolf, followed by “Chrysanthemums” by Giacomo Puccini and “String Quartet in D Minor, D. 810, Death and the Maiden” by Franz Schubert.

“The quartet has called [the series of music] ‘The Voice,’ and it’s because all three composers are known primarily for their vocal music,” Grace Bell, director of admissions and operations at the International Music Festival, said. “It’s their way of exploring how [the composers] still write with the voice in mind and how you use your instrument to express the voice.”

Bell also pointed out a key difference that makes the style of chamber stand out from other ensembles like orchestra.

“In chamber music,… each person has a unique part,” Bell said. “It’s a small group where each member brings their individual ideas. It’s very intimate. Everyone has a say.”

Applause erupted in the pizza restaurant as the guests pulled the Ying Quartet out from backstage for a third bow and encore. After the show, David Ying reflected on his performance and what playing music meant to him. He began by sharing how the quartet came to be.

“Any young musician, you’re looking for your lucky break,” David Ying said. “Maybe you go to New York City, maybe you meet someone well known or win a big competition.”

For the Yings, their lucky break lay in Jesup, Iowa, a farm town of 2,500 people. With a sponsorship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Chicago-born siblings began performing in the rural town. There, the group found itself confronting the value of their music.

“Why should [people] listen to a string quartet?” David Ying said. “What role [does] music play in this microcosm of a farm town in Iowa?”

David Ying found his answer in music’s ability to build community.

“You sit around the music like a campfire… [It’s] one of those things that connects people instead of dividing them,” David Ying said. “That’s my goal as a musician: to play with deep humanity.…  There’s just some miraculous aspect about these vibrations in the air that communicates to us, something human about making sounds that communicate.”

David Ying believes that although some may find it antiquated, classical music is a particularly special means of communication.

“It [might not] necessarily [be] part of the world we live in, and yet it still is because there’s some universal human value to it, the same way certain stories are timeless,” David Ying said. “There are certain things that are just human, and I think classical music taps into that.”

In light of Nomad closing next week, many attendees have wondered about the fate of the concert series’ future.

“Rest assured, things will be great,” Flynn said.