ADRIAN — A journey through three works for string quartet, each of which in its own way took previous musical forms and put a new twist on them, is on tap for the final concert of the Adrian Symphony Orchestra’s Summer Chamber Series.

The concert, at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 26 at Holy Rosary Chapel at the Adrian Dominican Sisters’ Motherhouse, features the Telegraph String Quartet, made up of violinists Joseph Maile and Eric Chin, violist Pei-Ling Lin, and cellist Jeremiah Shaw.

Tickets are $27 and can be ordered online at adriansymphony.org or by calling 517-264-3121. Student tickets are free at the box office only with a valid student ID.

The chapel is located at 1257 E. Siena Heights Drive, Adrian.

The evening’s program includes Debussy’s String Quartet in G minor, Kenji Bunch’s String Quartet No. 3: Apocryphal Dances, and Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 2 in A minor.

Maile said in an email interview that the Telegraph Quartet selected these particular pieces, not only for this concert but for performance throughout the ensemble’s upcoming 2026-27 season, because “we love each of them for their ingenuity and storytelling and we always try to start with that aspect when we choose repertoire.

“All three of these works are kind of taking a new spin on, and experimenting with, the traditional forms that were canonized before them — Mendelssohn is channeling the through-composed elements of the late Beethoven quartets he so adored, Debussy is putting a very modern and non-Germanic spin on a traditional German chamber and symphonic form and Kenji is cooking with the recipes of the Baroque using modern ingredients.”

Dubussy’s piece, the only one he wrote for string quartet, was composed in 1893. While it follows the traditional string quartet movement structure, it was “a seminal foray of Debussy’s into harmonic and coloristic worlds very exotic in their timbre and far from the established Austro-Germanic aesthetic that had reigned supreme up till then,” Maile said.

Bunch, an American composer who lives in Oregon, wrote his third string quartet in 2017. He “amalgamates the Baroque style — pre-dating the formal string quartet medium — with contemporary folk and popular music in a cheekily anachronistic tip of the hat to that bygone era,” Maile said.

Finally, the “the 19-year-old wunderkind, Felix Mendelssohn,” writing his first mature composition in 1827, “at this stage is fervently following in the very big creative footsteps of his predecessor Beethoven, experimenting with motivic unity in the traditional four- movement structure by linking musical themes throughout the first three movements and introduction into his final movement.”

The Telegraph Quartet was formed in 2013 in San Francisco, where some of the members had a shared connection to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. The ensemble takes its name from Telegraph Hill, an iconic landmark of the San Francisco Bay area.

“But I like to also think we share something poignant with our technological namesake, the telegraph machine, as one of the first forms of communication across vast distances —- something the string quartet does with emotions not only across cultural distances but (also) transmitting deep emotions of past eras into our own modern times,” Maile said.

After being the Quartet-in-Residence at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music from 2017 to 2024, the ensemble became the Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Michigan.

The Telegraph Quartet performs across the U.S. and overseas and has recorded several albums. The group’s current recording project, under the Azica label, involves contemporary string quartets by the late American composer George Rochberg and Jamaican composer Eleanor Alberga.

Coming up

The Adrian Symphony Orchestra’s 2026-27 season begins on Sunday, Oct. 11, with “Oscar Winners: Songs and Scores,” featuring music from Academy Award-winning films like “Frozen,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and more. That concert will be followed on Nov. 15 by the music of Hector Berlioz and Ludwig van Beethoven. See the complete schedule at adriansymphony.org.