To honor St. Patrick’s Day, CSO string quartet offers a program of Irish music

Worlds will mingle when a quartet of Chicago Symphony musicians performs Irish music at the Beverly Arts Center on the city’s South Side.

The center is presenting a matinee concert by a CSO string quartet on March 14 as part of programming to serve its community, situated among neighborhoods that are heavily Black and Irish. “We’re one of the most diverse communities on the South Side,” said Matt McKinney, BAC artistic director. “There’s a lot of pride in the Irish heritage — churches, pubs, Irish dancing.”

But McKinney also wants his local audience to connect to the cultural resources of the whole city. “The Chicago Symphony has some of the best players in the world,” he said, “and to have our audiences hear what they [CSO musicians] can do — they come out afterward and say, ‘That was incredible.’ ” He also noted that some CSO fans follow musicians to their chamber concerts, which offers a further chance for audiences to mix.

The arts center brought CSO musicians to its performance space last year for an afternoon of music by Black composers, and this year, McKinney decided that an afternoon of Irish music would be a natural followup. The complication, however, was that the roster of classical Irish composers is fairly shallow.

In response to the arts center’s request, CSO violist Danny Lai went digging, and he discovered the 19th-century composer Charles Villiers Stanford, now known primarily for his choral music. He did write a string quartet, however, and there is also a quartet arrangement of six of his songs for chorus.

A Mozart quartet will open the program, in part to help make the connection to the Germanic influence on Stanford’s composing style. For an encore, Lai has done his own arrangement of the beloved Irish tune “Danny Boy.”

“We are the Chicago Symphony,” Lai said. “We’re an international orchestra, we tour, but we have a mission to be integrated into the city, to play all over for different audiences.”

Lai made the arrangements for the program with the Beverly Arts Center, and also recruited the other three CSO musicians: violinists Danny Yehun Jin (assistant principal second violin) and Matous Michal, and cellist Olivia Jakyoung Huh.

When Lai joined the CSO in 2014, he took every opportunity he could get to play chamber music, and developed chemistry with a number of musicians. “You find your people,” he said. Now, as a seasoned player, he helps to organize several concerts a year under the CSO’s auspices.

Playing chamber repertoire gives orchestra musicians a chance to stretch themselves and make their own decisions, and Lai said that it also makes them better members of the big ensemble. “It’s good to know across the stage that you’ve got a friend, and how you’re going to play together,” he said. “Especially being a string player, you’re one of many.”

“Our mission is to be as diverse as the community we serve,” McKinney said. The South Side Irish Parade is the same weekend as the CSO concert, and McKinney noted that chamber music indoors is a more subdued or family-friendly way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.

“I’d like to keep this relationship moving forward,” McKinney said. “We want our audiences to be curious, and to bring them something they didn’t know they were going to love.”

Last year’s BAC concert “felt neighborly,” Lai said. “We’ve become a part of their community.”