Humane Performance Initiative

Quartet Harriet

Quartet Harriet was founded to honor the woman who made this possible, including funding: my mother, Harriet L. Brooks.

Members

• Christopher Brooksviolin

  Christopher Brooks was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He began studying the violin at PS 8 in Brooklyn Heights and at the Third Street Music School. Attending the New School of Music in Philadelphia, Mr. Brooks studied violin with Jascha Brodsky and Geoffrey Michaels.

  He has played chamber music and been a member of numerous orchestras including Orquesta Bética Filarmónica de Sevilla (concertmaster), the Frysk Orkest in the Netherlands, and the Lancaster, Reading, York, and Harrisburg Symphonies (concertmaster). Currently, he plays with the Allegro Chamber Orchestra in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

  In addition to his broad experience in orchestral and chamber music, he has performed with many improvisation-based ensembles, including folk, rock, jazz, Klezmer, and freely-improvised accompaniments for modern dance.

  Christopher Brooks is also a professional acoustics consultant, working as a Senior Consultant with TLC Engineering. His specialty is music and acoustics and acoustical design for performance spaces.

  www.creativeviolinist.com has more information on Christopher’s performing and teaching.

  Among his publications are:

  • The Creative Violinist: Integrating Technique and Music through Improvisation
  • Architectural Acoustics
  • Bemused: Poems Written After Dark

• Jennifer Sternickviolin

• Jenny Huerterviola

  Jenny Huerter is an active performer and teacher of viola and violin in the Central PA area. She is Assistant Principal Viola of the York Symphony Orchestra and performs regularly with other groups including the Pennsylvania Philharmonic, Gettysburg Chamber Orchestra, Lancaster Symphony Orchestra, Fulton Theater Orchestra and many other orchestral and chamber groups in the area. She is Adjunct Professor of Viola and Violin at Lancaster Bible College and coaches viola sectionals for the York Youth Symphony Orchestra, as well as teaching privately from her home in Annville, PA. Jenny holds a B.M. in Viola Performance and an M.M. in Viola Performance and Pedagogy, both from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, where she studied with Victoria Chiang. In addition to her work as a musician and teacher, Jenny is mom to four amazing kids who keep life full and always an adventure.

• Laurie Haines Reesevioloncello

  Laurie Haines Reese is a cellist dedicated to creating and performing music—especially new music—that explores the cello’s creative possibilities. An accomplished classical musician with a lifelong curiosity about what else the cello can do, she is equally at home in folk, jazz, improvisatory, and experimental music.

  Based in Lancaster, PA, Laurie has freelanced and concertized extensively throughout the United States and Europe, including performances in Los Angeles, Miami, Seattle, Hawaii, and New York. She holds a Master of Music in Performance from the University of Southern California, where she studied advanced cello repertoire with the legendary cellist Eleanor Schoenfeld.

  Laurie’s musical life has always crossed boundaries. While living in Miami, she performed with jazz great Ira Sullivan in the ensemble Strings Attached. She has been recording professionally since the age of seventeen and is as comfortable in the recording studio as she is on the concert stage. In an entirely different musical direction, she sings and plays cello with Abigail’s Garden, a folk duo with her sister, Tish Brown, performing Celtic music, originals, and an eclectic collection of covers.

  For Laurie, the cello is less a fixed category than an invitation: to explore, to listen, to improvise, and to discover what happens next. As a member of Quartet Harriet, she brings that spirit of curiosity and collaboration to the ensemble’s performances of new, experimental, and indeterminate music.

Past Performances

• The HopeOlivia’s Fine Art · Lancaster · 29 October 2026

  Quartet Harriet premieres The Hope, a new string quartet by Christopher Brooks.

• ArielLancaster Trust Building · Lancaster Fringe Fest · 21–24 May 2026

  With Marian West, dancer. Watch the performance

• StrandLancaster Art Vault · Lancaster Fringe Fest · 21–24 May 2026

  With Grant Street Dance Company. Watch the performance

• Atelier 11Paris · 18 October 2025

  With Hiia Saumaa, dancer. Watch the performance

• A Walk in the WoodsLancaster Art Vault · 10 April 2025

  Christopher Brooks, violin and viola. Watch the performance

• Wild Mountain ThymeWest Art · 2 June 2024

  With Maria Gabriella, singer. Watch the performance

• In CBuchanan Park · 9 April 2023

  About this performance (PDF)

• HOT Series of PhiladelphiaMascher Space Co-op · Philadelphia · 29 April 2016

  With Megan Mizanty, movement. Watch the performance

Workshop

Scores, sketches, rehearsals and writing — the work as it is being made.

• Promotional videosQuartet Harriet · October 2026

• The HopeWritten for Olivia’s Fine Art · September 2026

  My wife and I walked into Olivia Stoltzfus’s new gallery on a First Friday this summer. She was weaving at the rear of this bright, white room with soft, inviting paintings on the walls. Something about the texture and color of these works drew me in, and I began to hear something. I felt an affinity for what I was trying to do with my own performance project. I’m always looking for places to perform with Quartet Harriet. This one required a new string quartet.

  The piece is called The Hope. Working from the concept of weaving, I used the ’cello as the warp, a simple series of descending fifths. The two violins and viola are the weft, weaving through: pitches were chosen intuitively; no chords or theory, just tone colors that reflect my aural response to Olivia’s work, organized into motifs whose rhythm comes from Hatikvah — the hope. The coda uses Oseh Shalom, a prayer for peace, played on the most soulful of instruments, the viola, with splashes of gentle tonal color. Freedom within constraints: beautiful avant-garde.

  For the event, the Quartet — two violins, viola and ’cello — will be placed around the corners of the room. The motifs are to be played intuitively, within the structure of the warp, directed by the ’cello. The score and this description to be hung on the wall.

  I see this as a work of performance art, with the listeners free to walk around the room taking in Olivia’s work. My only request is that they listen silently.

  The Hope premieres at Olivia’s Fine Art, 140 North Prince Street, Lancaster, on Thursday, October 29th. Doors at 5:00, music at 5:15. Free-will offering.

  Score (PDF)

• The HopeRehearsal · 16 September 2026

  A new string quartet for Quartet Harriet, written for Olivia’s Fine Art. Listen to the rehearsal (or the full-quality WAV)