Performances + Events
NEC Honors Ensemble: Nakta Quartet
Jordan Hall
Each year, an audition committee of professional musicians and faculty selects a few exceptional student ensembles to represent the NEC Honors Ensemble Program. The ensembles work with a faculty coach and are given an opportunity to perform a spring recital in NEC's Jordan Hall.
To watch a live stream of this event, click the “Streaming Access” button at the top of the page.
Artist(s)
Nakta Quartet
Yen-Hsiang Darwin Chang, violin
Lingyu Dong, violin
Jeonghwan Yoon viola
Austin Topper, cello
Formed in September 2025 at New England Conservatory, the Nakta String Quartet (Korean for Camel) is a winner of the 2025-26 Honors Ensemble Award at NEC. Throughout the season, The Nakta Quartet will be performing around the Boston community, before giving a full recital in Jordan Hall on April 13th, 2026.
The quartet's members have spread their chamber music collaborations at various music festivals and venues, including the Perlman Music Program Chamber Workshop, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Taos School of Music, Heifetz Institute of Music and Verbier Festival.
The Nakta Quartet aspires to extending the chamber music community into spaces where it is seldom heard or appreciated, and are particularly devoted to engaging with public schools that may not have coherently established string programs, rural communities that may have limited access to live performance, and students who may not see themselves reflected or prioritized in "traditional" classical spaces. Subsequently, the goal is to ultimately honor the lineage of quartet repertoire while widening the circle of who it reaches
