Now celebrating its 11th season together, the Telegraph Quartet (Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violins; Pei-Ling Lin, viola; Jeremiah Shaw, cello) formed in 2013 with an equal passion for the standard chamber music repertoire and contemporary, non-standard works alike. Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “…an incredibly valuable addition to the cultural landscape” and “powerfully adept… with a combination of brilliance and subtlety,” the Telegraph Quartet was awarded the prestigious 2016 Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the Grand Prize at the 2014 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. The Quartet has performed in concert halls, music festivals, and academic institutions across the United States and abroad, including New York City’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Chamber Masters Series, and at festivals including the Chautauqua Institute, Interlochen Arts Festival, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, and the Emilia Romagna Festival. The Quartet is currently the Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Michigan. 

Notable collaborations include projects with pianists Leon Fleisher and Simone Dinnerstein; cellists Norman Fischer and Bonnie Hampton; violinist Ian Swensen; and the St. Lawrence Quartet and Henschel Quartett. A fervent champion of 20th- and 21st-century repertoire, the Telegraph Quartet co-commissioned John Harbison’s String Quartet No. 6 and gave its West Coast premiere in the fall of 2017 on San Francisco State University’s Morrison Artists Series. The Telegraph Quartet premiered Richard Festinger’s third string quartet, Icarus in Flight, a musical representation of climate change data from the year 1880 to projected simulations of 2080. The Quartet gave the world premiere of Robert Sirota’s String Quartet No. 3, Wave Upon Wave, at Weill Recital Hall for their Carnegie Hall debut in 2018, sponsored by the Naumburg Foundation. In 2022, the Telegraph premiered Robert Sirota’s Contrapassos with soprano Abigail Fischer, featuring libretto by Stevan Cavalier and commissioned by Sierra Chamber Music Society. Also, in 2022, the Telegraph Quartet gave the world premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s octet, Ever Yours, with the St. Lawrence String Quartet. Ever Yours was co-commissioned by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the String Quartet Biennale Amsterdam, and the Clarice Smith Center at the University of Maryland at Columbia.

In August 2023, the Telegraph Quartet released its latest album Divergent Paths, the first in a series of recordings titled 20th Century Vantage Points, on Azica Records. This first volume features two works that (to the best of the Quartet’s knowledge) have never been recorded on the same album before: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major and Arnold Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 1 in D minor, Op. 7. Through this series, the Telegraph Quartet intends to explore string quartets of the 20th century – an era of music that the group has felt especially called to perform since its formation. The New York Times praised the Telegraph’s performance as “…full of elegance and pinpoint control…,” adding, "...in the Schoenberg, they achieve something truly special, meticulously guiding its often wayward progress. At times Schoenberg makes the four strings sound almost orchestral, but the Telegraph players can also make his contrapuntal tangles radiantly clear. Every minute of their account sounds gripping and purposeful..." Divergent Paths follows Into The Light (Centaur, 2018), an album highlighting a gripping set of works by Leon Kirchner, Anton Webern, and Benjamin Britten. The San Francisco Chronicle praised the album, saying, "Just five years after forming, the Bay Area’s Telegraph Quartet has established itself as an ensemble of serious depth and versatility, and the group’s terrific debut recording only serves to reinforce that judgment." AllMusic acclaimed, “An impressive beginning for an adventurous group, this 2018 release puts the Telegraph Quartet on the map.”

Beyond the concert stage, the Telegraph Quartet seeks to spread its music through education and audience engagement. In the fall of 2017, the Quartet traveled to communities and schools in Maine with Yellow Barn’s Music Haul, a mobile performance stage that brings music outside of the concert hall to communities across the U.S. The Quartet has given master classes at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Collegiate and Pre-College Divisions, through the Morrison Artist Series at San Francisco State University, and abroad at the Taipei National University of the Arts and in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Telegraph has also served as artists-in-residence at the Interlochen Adult Chamber Music Camp, SoCal Chamber Music Workshop, and Crowden Music Center Chamber Music Workshop. In November 2020, the Telegraph Quartet launched ChamberFEAST!, a chamber music workshop in Taiwan. ChamberFEAST! featured two concerts by the Telegraph at Eslite Concert Hall, a week-long chamber music intensive with students from Taiwanese schools and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and masterclasses and coachings at high schools and universities across Taiwan. In fall 2020, Telegraph launched an online video project called TeleLab, in which the ensemble collectively breaks down the components of a movement from various works for quartet. TeleLab draws the listener deeper into how those components fit together and evolve over the course of the piece while giving the audience the time and space to deepen their experience of music. In the summers of 2022 and 2024, the Telegraph Quartet traveled to Vienna to work with Schoenberg expert Henk Guittart in conjunction with the Arnold Schoenberg Center, researching all of Schoenberg's string quartets.

Violinist Eric Chin, a founding member of the recently acclaimed Telegraph Quartet, is equally passionate about performing and teaching. Captivated by chamber music, he founded the award- winning Nexus String Quartet in 2007 at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. After the final season of the Nexus String Quartet, Mr. Chin received invitation to join the Hausmann Quartet and the chamber music and string faculty at San Diego State University, and held that position until 2014. He then decided to move back to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he later co- founded the Telegraph Quartet.

Mr. Chin’s concert tours as a soloist, chamber musician, and concertmaster have taken him performing throughout Europe as well as in Asia, Canada, and the United States. He has appeared on faculty at festivals such as the Capistrano International Chamber Music Festival, LyricaFest, and Chamber Music Connection Ohio, and was invited abroad to give concerts and masterclasses at the top art universities in Taiwan, including the National Taiwan University of Arts, Tunghai University, National Pingtung University of Education, Wenzao Ursuline College, and Taiwan Normal University. Mr. Chin has also appeared as performing artist at the Great Lakes Music Festival and at Music Mountain.

As a chamber musician, Mr. Chin has performed with some of the most sought after musicians of our time, including members of the Juilliard, Concord, Meliora, Miami, Takács, and Alexander string quartets.

Mr. Chin currently maintains a committed teaching studio in the San Jose and San Francisco Bay area.

Native-Taiwanese violist Pei-Ling Lin is a dedicated chamber musician and teacher. Her passion in chamber music and education has brought her to major concert halls and festivals across the nation and abroad.

As a co-founder of the Bay-Area Telegraph Quartet, Ms. Lin was the winner of both the Senior String Division Gold Medal and the Grand Prize at the 2014 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, just this past May. During the 2013/14 season she made appearances with the Left Coast Ensemble, San Francisco Symphony, Zivian-Tomkins Duo and Bonnie Hampton. Ms. Lin spent the summer of 2014 with the Telegraph Quartet at the Great Lakes Festival in Detroit and at the prestigious Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont. Past appearances have included performances with such artists as Donald Weilerstein, Roger Tapping and Norman Fischer, as well as the Mendelssohn Octet with Cho-Liang Lin, James Dunham and Lynn Harrell. Recently, Ms. Lin has had the opportunity to work and perform with renowned artists such as Robert Mann, Kim Kashkashian, Ian Swensen, Joseph Swensen, Joseph Lin, and Paul Katz.

Ms. Lin was associate principal violist of South Dakota Symphony Orchestra’s 2009-2010 season, a member of Augustana Faculty string quartet and viola faculty at Augustana College. The quartet traveled and taught in more than 10 high schools throughout the region of South Dakota and Iowa. For both summers of 2012 and 2013 Ms. Lin taught viola and coached chamber music at the Yellow Barn Music Festival’s Young Artist Program. In the spring of 2014 she served as a guest chamber coach of the collegiate division at San Francisco Coservatory of Music . Ms. Lin is currently on the viola faculty of the Pre-College Program at San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Ms. Lin attended The Juilliard School for her Bachelors of Music and studied under Hsin-Yun Huang. She holds a Masters of Music from Rice University where she studied with Mr. James Dunham of the Cleveland String Quartet. Ms. Lin also holds an Artist Certicate in Chamber Music from San Francisco Conservatory.

Jeremiah Shaw, cellist, has performed throughout Asia, Europe, and the U.S. with various symphonies, chamber orchestras, and ensembles. Since founding the recently acclaimed Telegraph Quartet in the fall of 2013 in San Francisco, the quartet won the Grand Prize and Gold Medal at the 2014 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition.

As an avid chamber musician, Jeremiah spent multiple summers at Kneisel Hall in Maine, having the privilege of working with members of the most prestigious and influential string quartets of America such as the Cleveland, Juilliard, and Concord String Quartets. Past festival performances include, Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in Michigan, Mainly Mozart Music Festival in California, Gretna Music Festival in Pennsylvania, Music at the Gardner and LyricaFest in Massachusetts, Steans Institute at Ravinia Music Festival, the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy, Chautauqua Music Festival, and he has been a member of the cello section of the Sun Valley Summer Symphony in Idaho since 2005.

Jeremiah has held faculty positions at San Diego State University School of Music, The SoCal Chamber Music Workshops in California, Chamber Music Connection in Colombus, and at Sun Valley Summer Symphony Music Workshops in Idaho. During his fellowship at New World Symphony in Miami Beach Florida he performed the Shostakovich Cello Concerto no. 1 with conductor Alasdair Neale as winner of the concerto competition. Jeremiah holds performance degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Juilliard School, as well as a bachelor degree in Music Production and Recording Technology from Shenandoah University. He also had the unique opportunity of interning for the Grammy Award Winning classical music label Sono Luminus, while attaining his audio engineering degree. His principal cello teachers include Richard Aaron and Joel Krosnick.

Violinist Joseph Maile has been passionate about chamber music and teaching from very early on in his musical studies and he has worked and performed in various ensembles throughout the United States.

As a chamber musician Mr. Maile is a founding member of the San- Francisco-based Telegraph Quartet, an ensemble that straddles equally the works of past and present. Along with the other members of the Telegraph Quartet, Mr. Maile was the recipient of the Senior String Division Gold Medal and Grand Prize at the 2014 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. This past season Mr. Maile has made appearances with the Left Coast Ensemble, Vocallective, the Zivian-Tomkins Duo and Bonnie Hampton. Mr. Maile has also collaborated in past years with numerous artists , including Ian Swensen, Norman Fischer, James Dunham, Roberto Diaz, Menahem Pressler, Gilbert Kalish, Roger Tapping, Donald Weilerstein and composer John Adams. During the summer of 2014, Mr. Maile was invited along with the Telegraph Quartet to participate in the Great Lakes Festival, directed by Paul Katz.

Mr. Maile began his career as an educator at the Michael P. Hammond Preparatory Program at Rice University, as a private violin instructor. Mr. Maile is violin faculty at the Pre-College Program of San Francsico Conservatory of Music and has also coached chamber music as interim faculty for the San Francisco Conservatory’s Collegiate Chamber Music Class for 2013/2014 school year. During the previous summer of 2013 Mr. Maile coached chamber music at the Young Artist Program at Yellow Barn Music Festival in Putney, Vermont.

Hailing originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, Mr. Maile received his Bachelors in Music at the Juilliard School under the tutelage of Itzhak Perlman and Cathy Cho and his Masters in Music at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University with Kathleen Winkler. Mr. Maile also has an Artist Certificate in Chamber Music studying with Ian Swensen and Mark Sokol at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.