About
Elin Marsh, ViolinTomas Reinholt, ViolinNadia Ferrers, ViolaJoseph Okonkwo, Cello
The Marin Quartet plays the central quartet repertoire alongside the music of its own time, and has built a reputation for programmes that put the two in the same room rather than in separate halves.
The four players met in Manchester as students and have worked together since, first as a reading group meeting on Sunday afternoons and, from their Trelawney Festival debut, as a professional quartet. They take their name from the Marin hills, where they spent the summer that decided them.
The quartet appears across the UK and Europe, at concert societies and festivals from Gullane to Faenza, and returns each season to Ashcroft Hall in Manchester, where they are Quartet in Residence. Their Beethoven has been a constant: they gave the complete Op. 18 over a weekend at Fenmere and are recording the cycle for Fenmere Records.
Alongside it they have commissioned and premiered new work, most recently Ann Tessier's Sightlines, written for them and now travelling with them through the season.
Teaching and residencies
The quartet coaches young ensembles at Kilmory each summer and runs a schools programme alongside its Ashcroft Hall residency, reaching around two thousand children a year.
Elin MarshViolin
Elin studied in Manchester and Copenhagen, and led the Northern Sinfonia's second violins before the quartet became full-time work.
She plays a violin by Giovanni Grancino, on loan from a private collection.
Tomas ReinholtViolin
Tomas grew up in Aarhus and came to Manchester for a year that turned into a decade. He writes the quartet's programme notes and takes most of the blame for the programming.
Nadia FerrersViola
Nadia came to the viola late, from the violin, and says the switch is the only career decision she has never once doubted.
She teaches at the Kilmory summer course and mentors the viola section of the Ashcroft Hall youth orchestra.
Joseph OkonkwoCello
Joseph divides his time between the quartet and a continuo career, and is a regular guest with period-instrument groups across Europe.