Source Code: Music She Wrote

Sunday, May 18th at 3:00pm

On Sunday, May 18th at 3pm Milton Community Concerts presents the final concert of its tenth anniversary season, a FREE concert featuring the Boston Public Quartet and guest flutist DeShaun Gordon King/Diji Kay. This program is called “Source Code: Music She Wrote” and will include the music of five landmark women composers from the late romantic period to the present. As a gift to the community this event for the entire family is offered with free admission (come early for best seating). It will take place at the historic Meetinghouse of First Parish of Milton-UU, 535 Canton Avenue.

The Boston Public Quartet was founded in 2007 and is dedicated to normalizing the amplification of historically excluded voices in classical music, both musicians and composers. Equally at home performing on a street corner in Mattapan Square, the Kennedy Center in D.C., or the Harvard Musical Association in Boston, the BPQ was created to connect, inspire, and innovate as an ensemble-in-residence in Boston’s diverse neighborhoods.

The Boston Public Quartet includes violinists Betsy Hinkle and Grant Houston, violist Jason Amos, and cellist Nicholas Johnson. Each is an outstanding soloist in their own right. They will be joined by guest flutist DeShaun Gordon King/Diji Kay, who has performed as a soloist and principal flute throughout Europe, Asia, and the U.S. He grew up surrounded by griot traditions, jazz and gospel music. He has collaborated with Castle of Our Skins, the Celebrity Series of Boston, the American Repertory Theatre, and Shelter Music Boston.

The composers on this diverse program include Boston’s own Florence Price and Amy Beach, Jamaican-British composer Eleanor Alberga OBE, Felix’s (more talented?) older sister Fanny Mendelssohn, and Grammy winner and close friend to the group, Jessie Montgomery. The title of the program is drawn from the quartet “Source Code” by Jessie Montgomery, which channels Alvin Ailey, Langston Hughes, and Ella Fitzgerald, and invites the audience to take a journey with each piece on the program to decode the sources which are embedded within the experience.

This concert is partially funded by a generous grant from the Milton Cultural Council and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, as well as many individual donors who support MCC and BPQ.

Artist Headshots and Bios

At home performing on a street corner in Mattapan Square, the Strand Theatre in Dorchester, the Kennedy Center in DC and the Harvard Musical Association in Boston, the Boston Public Quartet was created to connect, inspire and innovate as an ensemble-in-residence in Boston’s diverse neighborhoods. The BPQ is dedicated to normalizing the amplification of historically excluded voices in classical music; this can mean the musicians themselves, the composers we feature, the students we work with, and the audiences we engage.

In addition to performing on the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage, The Boston Public Quartet has collaborated with Sidra Bell Dance New York, and was the inaugural ensemble in residence for the Celebrity Series of Boston’s Neighborhood Arts initiative from 2012 - 2016. Collectively we have performed with the Boston Ballet, Shelter Music Boston, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Castle of our Skins, the Sphinx Symphony, and the Catalyst Quartet. Also, members have collaborated with musicians of the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. We are honored to be supported by Chamber Music America, the Puffin Foundation, the American Music Project, the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the City of Boston Office of Arts and Culture.

We regularly perform the music of Jessie Montgomery, Florence Price, William Grant Still and other Black composers. We also champion modern and living composers such as Eleanor Alberga and Lavell Blackwell.

We are graduates of the New England Conservatory, Julliard, the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, Peabody Conservatory, University of Michigan and Florida State University. As avid educators of both string instrument study and chamber music, we teach and have taught at such institutions as Project STEP, NEC Prep, Boston Youth Symphony Intensive Community Program, the Rose Conservatory and musiConnects.

Founded in 2007 by violinist Betsy Hinkle, the Boston Public Quartet served until 2018 as a Resident String Quartet of musiConnects. The BPQ relaunched as a stand-alone entity in 2021 and is now a flexible string ensemble with piano, including duos, string quartet and piano quintet.

Jason Amos began playing viola through his public schools in Southfield, MI - later continuing his studies at the University of Michigan and New England Conservatory. Jason has served as Violist in the Boston Public Quartet since 2010 and regularly collaborates in chamber music concerts with Grammy Award-winning and other premiere artists around the world. Jason has appeared as soloist with the Ann Arbor Symphony and Boston Landmarks Orchestras, among others. He has won honors in several competitions including 4th Place Laureate of the Sphinx Competition's Senior Division, and 1st Place Laureate in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra's Bradlin Scholarship Concerto Competition. His faculty positions have included Project STEP, the New England Conservatory Preparatory, and the Sphinx Performance Academy. Jason proudly serves on the Advisory Council of Boston Arts Academy - Boston's only full inclusion high school for the visual and performing arts.

Betsy Hinkle is a Boston-based violinist equally at home on the concert stage and serving
her community through equity-based music education, performances, and arts administration. She is the founder of the Boston Public Quartet, dedicated to normalizing the amplification of historically excluded voices in classical music. Betsy has performed throughout New England with orchestras and chamber ensembles, including the Boston Public Quartet, Shelter Music Boston, the Boston Ballet Orchestra, the Orchestra of Emmanuel Music and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project.

Betsy is a newly elected member of the Board of the Boston Musician’s Association Local 9-535 and a founding member and co-chair of the BMA Anti-Racism Committee. She was a 2018-2020 META Fellow of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, served as the 2017 Alumni Commencement speaker at New England Conservatory, and received the 2014 Barbara C. Harris Award for Social Justice.

Betsy founded the non-profit musiConnects in 2007 to establish and support educational and artistic residences using an innovative chamber music model. From 2007 - 2017 she served as the organization’s Executive and then Artistic Director and until 2021 served in the role of Resident Musician.

Betsy received her Master of Music in Violin Performance, as well as a Music in Education Concentration, in the studio of Nicholas Kitchen of the renowned Borromeo String Quartet. A native Floridian, she received her Bachelor of Music from the Florida State University, on full academic and music scholarships, and played in the Honors Piano Trio as a Liberace Scholar. She lives in Roslindale with her husband and two children and loves cooking, baking and gardening.

Violinist Grant Houston connects with listeners through performances of unbridled energy and emotional magnetism. Known for drawing in audiences with a uniquely compelling musical voice, he has been described as playing "as ethereally as mist... the audience kept so quiet that it seemed we were holding our breath throughout." (Yale Alumni Magazine). Particularly devoted to chamber music, Houston is a founding member of Trio Gaia, a co-artistic director of the GRAMMY-nominated Palaver Strings, and a frequently featured performer at chamber music series and festivals across the country.

In recent seasons, Houston has brought a distinct presence to a wide range of performances across the chamber music landscape. Notable engagements include Spoleto Festival USA (Bank of America Chamber Music), the Grand Canyon Music Festival, Staunton Music Festival, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, the Chamber Music Society of Central Virginia, Monadnock Music, Wellesley Chamber Players, First Mondays at Jordan Hall, and Juventas New Music. Pre-professional summers were spent at Ravinia's Steans Music Institute, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, the Perlman Music Program, the Moritzburg Festival Academy, and many others. Frequently sought after for special projects and collaborations, he has been a regular guest of Castle of Our Skins, was featured in a studio recording of Florence Price’s G Major String Quartet which aired on WGBH public radio, and has performed at specially curated events for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's Weekend Concert Series. He appears often with the conductorless ensembles A Far Cry, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and in the summer of 2024 was named a Co-Artistic Director of the Portland, Maine-based Palaver Strings. Houston has also performed widely as a soloist and recitalist, including a concerto appearance with the Plymouth Philharmonic and performances of the piano and violin duo repertoire with pianists Max Levinson, Efi Hackmey, and Melvin Chen.

As the violinist of Trio Gaia, Houston tours with one of today’s most exciting piano trios. Offering audiences dynamic, personally relevant experiences inside and outside the concert hall, Trio Gaia has made a name for itself performing recitals on series such as the Artist Series Concerts of Sarasota, Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts, the Harvard Musical Association, Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society, Davidson College Concert Series, Music on Norway Pond, Shelter Island Friends of Music, and many others. Equally known is the trio’s passion for bringing people of all ages into the experience of chamber music, leading to its repeat residencies at the Panama Jazz Festival, regular interactive workshops with elementary, middle, and high-school students, lecture-recitals at MIT’s Whitehead Institute, masterclasses for the New England Conservatory Preparatory School, and engagements at educational programs such as PRIZM International Festival in Tennessee and the Massachusetts Suzuki Festival. In recent years, Trio Gaia has garnered numerous accolades, including prizes at the 2022 WDAV Young Chamber Musicians Competition, the 2022 Premio Trio di Trieste in Italy, the 2021 Chamber Music Yellow Springs Competition, the 2020 International Chamber Music Ensemble Competition, and the 2019 Plowman Competition. In 2024, the trio completed a three-year appointment as Trio-in-Residence in the New England Conservatory's Professional Piano Trio Program.

Houston has performed with artists such as Jeremy Denk, Inon Barnatan, Paul Biss, Marcus Thompson, Paul Wiancko, and Todd Phillips, and counts Donald Weilerstein, Ayano Ninomiya, Vivian Hornik Weilerstein, and Merry Peckham among his mentors. Committed to music education himself, he has given masterclasses at Duke University, the Virginia Governor’s School for the Arts, and the Winsor School, and now serves on the faculty of New England Conservatory Preparatory School. Houston completed both undergraduate and graduate study at the New England Conservatory of Music, and performs on a 1757 Michel’angelo Bergonzi violin on generous loan from a private foundation.

Nicholas Johnson (he/they) is a cellist based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Trained in Florida’s Public School system, Nick had formative early experiences including premiering a string quartet evoking a shuttle launch at Kennedy Space Center which fostered a love for music education, contemporary compositions, and chamber music. In Boston, Nicholas performs with ensembles including the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and Odyssey Opera (currently appearing on six albums), Sound Icon, Chamber Orchestra of Boston, and the Latin American Music Festival’s Unidos orchestra. A dedicated chamber musician, he has performed with Winsor Music, New Gallery Concert Series, Juventas New Music Ensemble, Semiosis Quartet, and Boston Public Quartet. With these groups and others, Nicholas workshops pieces with composition students at Boston University, MIT, Brown, and Berklee. He served as the coordinating member of the quartet-in-residence for the Grand Canyon Music Festival, workshopping and performing pieces by Diné high schoolers at the Native American Composers Apprenticeship Project, and will reprise this role in Summer 2025. Nicholas holds a Bachelor of Music from the University of South Florida, and a Master of Music and a Graduate Performance Diploma from Boston Conservatory at Berklee. His instructors include Joan Markstein, Scott Kluksdahl, and Andrew Mark. He plays a 2016 cello by Boston luthier Curtis Bryant.

Known for his soulful tone and mesmerizing phrasing, Trevor James Alto Flute Artist Díjí Kay (née DeShaun Gordon-King) has given performances as a soloist and principal flute in Europe, Asia, and throughout the United States. Díjí Kay grew up surrounded by griot traditions, jazz and gospel music. Inspired by the worlds and traditions of his upbringing, Díjí Kay grew passionate about programming that blends them all together to create unique and memorable concert experiences.

As he continued to expand his musical versatility, Díjí Kay also went inward to cultivate his spiritual practice. It was through these meditations that he understood how he wanted to use his art. Following this epiphany, Díjí Kay moved to Cambridge to pursue a Performance Diploma from the Longy School of Music where he worked with Sergio Pallottelli where he would also be able to study therapeutic music.

During his time in Boston, Díjí Kay has collaborated with Castle of Our Skins, the Celebrity Series of Boston, Shelter Music Boston, Juventas New Music Ensemble, the Boston Children's Chorus, and the American Repertory Theatre. He has also been featured on GBH. A graduate of the Longy School of Music and Harvard Ed Portal Pipeline Artist Fellow, Díjí Kay’s work and studies center around synergizing the principles of therapeutic music, sound healing, and performance practice to curate healing and transformative concert experiences.