Listening to Music Beyond Sound: Medea String Quartet and Merita Project

Stories | May 14, 2025

What happens when music goes beyond being something we hear? When it becomes something we see, touch, and feel with our body and emotionally? This is exactly the experience the Medea String Quartet offered in their collaboration with the Merita Project, a European initiative that brings together chamber music, cultural heritage, and young talent to breathe new life into classical music performance.

A Platform Where Music Meets Meaning

Merita crosses borders, from digital to analog, from old to new, while creating space for up-and-coming ensembles to develop artistically as well as dig deeper into deeply crucial societal topics.

Amongst these musicians are Ada (cellist) and Clara (second violinist) of the Medea String Quartet. Both musical companions and friends since over seven years ago, their journey began in Turin, Italy, and continued in London at the Royal College of Music. In 2020, with the new additions of Mira and Joanna, the Medea String Quartet was created.

A Residency of Reflection, Connection, and Creation

The quartet were part of a Merita residency in Ede, the Netherlands, a hectic week of workshops, findings, and new meeting people. The piece they developed, “Space Out: Your Attention on Stage,” was about making music more interesting and accessible for people with attention deficit disorders like ADHD.

Parted into two halves, the project combines performance with narrative and sensory stimulation:

Part One: Music is married to visual storytelling, using a projector to bridge musical concepts and evocative images, such as a ghost whale tale. With the assistance of professional dramaturgy and coaching, the musicians learned to narrate and perform the story on stage, stepping out of their comfort zones to learn acting and writing.

Part Two: Audience members are invited to sit among and even touch the musicians, placing their backs against the quartet’s backs, to feel the vibrations and physicality of live chamber music. It’s an immersive, almost tactile concert experience, offering a shared moment of vulnerability and resonance.

Mentors Who Make a Difference

The life-changing week was possible due to committed mentors and coaches. Marc helped them establish the project and public communication; Elisabeth helped with logistical support and emotional support; Annette worked on musical expression; Ivar helped with ensemble dynamics and communication; and Emma worked on stage presence and movement, even helping to write the script for the performance.

The quartet refers to the support they received as “nurturing,” “caring,” and “rare.” They emphasize how Merita made them feel their voices, growth, and imagination mattered – a basic but often missing ingredient in the journey of aspiring classical musicians.

Vulnerability, Growth, and Deep Connection

Reflecting on the residency, members of the Medea String Quartet recall the final session as the most emotional moment, an honest circle of appreciation and transformation. “It feels like we spent a week without our skin on,” one of them said, one of them shared, describing the raw openness they experienced with their peers and mentors.

Their time at Ede wasn’t merely time spent making a project. It was time spent making people, making connections, experimenting, and growing. It was time spent discovering new ways to communicate music and emotion, and discovering that listeners don’t merely hear music – they feel it, they respond to it, and they connect with it.

A New Way to Experience Music

For the Medea Quartet, it was an adventure they will never forget. They now aim to bring this multi-sensory, profoundly human form of performance to wider audiences. They would like audiences not just to remember the music, but to experience it by sight, by human touch, by story.

Even if it’s just “five seconds” that someone carries home from a concert, they say, that would be enough. Because in that moment, the music becomes part of someone’s story. And that is where the true power of art lies.

Ciao, and thank you for hearing the story of Medea String Quartet and Merita Project.