The RSO String Quartet, featuring the principal string players from Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra, will perform for the first time in Newtown on Saturday, March 11, at 7 pm, at Edmond Town Hall, 45 Main Street.

Violinists Jorge Avila and Mialtin Zhezha, violist Suzanne Corey-Sahlin, and cellist Dr Nicholas Hardie plan to present an engaging concert of world-class chamber music featuring both traditional and contemporary classical pieces.

Hardie is additionally co-director for cello, chamber music and advanced performance techniques at Greenwich Suzuki Academy, where he teaches with his wife Heather. He is also a member of Greater Bridgeport Symphony.

Speaking last weekend to Bob Anderson on WMNR’s Fine Arts Forum, Hardie said he is a third generation classical musician.

“Both my parents are string players — my mom’s a violist and my dad’s a cellist, and that would be where I get tied in to all of that — and my grandfather was also a double bass player and also played with the National Symphony and taught for decades,” he said Sunday evening.

Hardie’s grandfather taught at the University of Iowa, he said. His mother grew up there, he added, and his parents were instrumental in developing the music program at Baylor University.

“I grew up not only hearing my parents, but my mom creating this world of music around me, so that we had a lot of opportunities to both hear music and play music, and share music,” he said. Hardie’s parents did not push him into a musical career, he said, but he was nevertheless immersed by age 3.

“The music bug wouldn’t leave,” he said. Hardie has studied, educated, and performed music. He earned a doctorate in cello performances from Boston University, a master of music degree from Peabody Conservatory-Johns Hopkins University, and a bachelor of music from Baylor University. He was shaped, according to his biography, by his apprenticeship with the Takacs Quartet, and extensive studies with current and former members of The Juilliard Quartet, in addition to working with other major quartets and chamber music groups.

“Whether you’re sharing with a student who is seeing music for the first time, or sharing that art with an audience, it’s the connection, and the personal aspect of sharing those things that I always find the most rewarding,” he told Anderson.

RSO Executive Director Laurie Kenagy in a statement called the artists of the quartet “exceptional musicians and engaging performers who truly enjoy sharing the experience of live music with their audience.”

The RSO String Quartet formed in April 2021. At the suggestion of Kenagy, according to Hardie, he and the other three RSO principals began working on projects as the world began reopening following the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It was the first time any of us had been in close proximity, and unmasked, and it felt sort of surreal,” he said. “They caught it all on video, which was amazing, and then we started working on some other projects.”

The quartet has collaborated with The Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield, creating programs around featured artists.

“It was both a complex and incredibly inspiring direction to take programming,” Hardie said.

“One of the things this group does really well, and what I really find stimulating about it, is we started, in order to present these programs, we would directly communicate with the audience, and tell them where we got our inspiration and what we saw in the piece.

“The music stands on its own, but seeing it through our lenses, seeing it in these other ways, gave them a more personal insight into the piece, which then made the whole experience more meaningful,” he said.

For the concert in Newtown, he said, the quartet can be “an extension of the orchestra, and a more personal extension.” Its members will continue, he said, to continue the young quartet’s mission of drawing more people in to music. The experience, he said, “makes the whole experience more meaningful, when they feel that connection.”

Works of Haydn, Mozart, Debussy, and Schubert will be among the pieces performed — and discussed — Saturday evening.

Tickets for the March 11 performance at Edmond Town Hall are $40 adults, $35 senior citizens, $10 for students. They are available at edmondtownhall.org and ridgefieldsymphony.org/rso-quartet.

Tickets include admission to a pre-show reception to begin at 6:30.

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Managing Editor Shannon Hicks can be reached at shannon@thebee.com.