About

Beo String Quartet

The eclectic and highly polished Beo String Quartet, founded in 2015, has created a niche for itself as a daring, genre-defying ensemble. Rigorously trained in the classical tradition, violinists Jason Neukom and Andrew Giordano, violist Sean Neukom, and cellist Ryan Ash also know their way around contemporary expression, including the use of electronics, live sound processing, and spatial audio manipulation. Their performances of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, or Shostakovich have been compared to those of the best among 21 st century international string quartets.

On January 31, 2023, the Beo String Quartet made an auspicious New York debut under the aegis of the distinguished Morgan Library and Museum. The program included selections from J.S. Bach’s timeless “Art of the Fugue,” BWV 1080; the New York premiere of Sean Neukom’s “People;” “Enthusiasm Strategies” by noted American composer Missy Mazzoli; and Dmitri Shostakovich’s haunting Quartet No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 110. On the same day, the ensemble released a new album on NeuKraft Records entitled “131,” named for Beethoven’s celebrated String Quartet No. 14 in C# Minor, Op. 131. In addition to the Beethoven, the recording includes Missy Mazzoli’s “Enthusiasm Strategies” and “19/20” by Beo violist and composer Sean Neukom.

George Grella, covering the Morgan Library concert for New York Classical Review, wrote on February 1, 2023:

Beo String Quartet makes an outstanding New York debut. ..These days that one expects exact intonation and clear articulation from quartets, at all speeds and dynamic levels…The Beo Quartet had all that technical facility, to which they added a sound that was grainy with a touch of velvet, robust and woody—superior technique wrapped in a classic sound. Inside the historic room of J.P. Morgan’s own library, in the company of books and music manuscripts, and with the space’s excellent acoustic, the sheer sound of the quartet was invigorating and deeply satisfying. As was their artistry, which came across in both the programming and the playing. With all this skill, passion, and strength, one expected great things form the Shostakovich performance, and the quartet did not disappoint. This was an ideal pairing of playing and compositional styles—the quartet’s sheer expressive force added tremendous weight to Shostakovich’s theme.

And Frank Daykin, reviewing January 31, 2023 in The New York Concert Review, had this to say:

“Beo” means: to bless, make happy, gladden, and delight. Based on this one introductory hearing, I believe the Beo String Quartet is poised to do just that, to an ever widening circle of audiences,” wrote Frank Daykin January 31, 2023 in New York Concert Review. [they have] two areas of perfection—1) absolute purity of intonation, which was really evident in their Bach selections and 2) that supernatural one-ness of interpretive intent that animates the best quartets...The “heat” of Beo’s performance of [the Shostakovich Quartet No. 8] showed me that its strengths may lie in the traditional repertoire, despite their commitment to adventuresome commissioning and their admirable educational outreach angle—so necessary if there is to be an audience for this sort of thing at all in the future…Bravo Beo, I hope to hear many more good things from and about you for years to come.

The March/April 2023 issue of Fanfare includes several fine reviews of the new album 131. “In short, this is a hip, full-immersion quartet capable of far-reaching achievements...The Beo’s reading of the Beethoven is closely knit, deeply sincere, and engaging…this young ensemble has reached the essence of what it means to be inspired by Beethoven…The fusion of past and present makes this release resonate with our times as few CDs do. The recorded sound on the Beo’s own label is up to the highest standards.” – Peter Burwasser. And Ken Meltzer, in the same issue, wrote, “All told, a compelling, thought-provoking, and musically satisfying journey. I recommend it for your consideration.”

Undaunted by artistic or logistical challenges, they play the masters in a variety of settings, collaborate with living composers, and explore technology’s capacity to the fullest. Called “an absolutely spectacular group of young, hungry musicians” by composer Marc Mellits, University of Chicago, and “an ensemble whose music-making speaks to the heart as well as the mind by composer Richard Danielpour, Curtis Institute for Music, Beo defies categorization. Works such as “Haydn Recycled” and “Projection 1: Triple Quartet” combine virtuosic quartet writing and staging in various forms. To date, Beo has performed more than 140 concert works, including some 65 world premieres, throughout Europe and the United States.

Beo regularly collaborates with living composers including Richard Danielpour, Marc Mellits, Missy Mazzoli, Lawrence Dillon, Joel Hoffman, and Charles Nichols. As part of its annual residency with the Charlotte New Music Festival, Beo hosts an annual Composition Competition which yields a winning work selected from 100+ submissions. Every year, the quartet then records the composition and makes a point of programming it frequently in subsequent seasons.

NeuKraft Records was recently founded so as to facilitate producing and distributing Beo’s numerous original projects without constraints of style or genre. Beo built a new, personalized recording studio space to conduct its recording, engineering, mastering, and live-streaming in-house using state-of-the-art equipment, giving the players direct control over the quality of the final product and greatly simplifying the production process. Projects released on the label include string quartet masterpieces, original art songs, and long-form concept albums.

Music education outreach is essential to the quartet’s vision. Beo has earned a reputation for its thoughtfully crafted educational programs. Although disguised as entertainment, each show is designed to teach real chamber music skills and a love for classical music to students ranging from complete beginners to pre- professionals. Also in development is a publishing effort to make the student ensemble works of Richard Neukom—father to Beo founders Sean and Jason Neukom—a strings educator with 40+ years’ experience, available to elementary, middle, and high-school string ensemble educators. In some cases, these pieces have solo parts for Beo to play so they can be used as part of in-person clinics with student ensembles. Through its educational tours of elementary, middle, and high schools, short-term residencies at colleges and universities, and its annual residency at Dakota Chamber Music, Beo has shared these engaging experiences with more than 3,500 students to date.

The name “Beo” derives from Latin, meaning “to make happy.”

With new projects always in the works, be sure to stay in touch with all things Beo by subscribing to @beostringquartet on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and SoundCloud. Beo joined the roster of the Lisa Sapinkopf Artists in 2022.

Jason Neukom / Violin

Jason Neukom is a founding member and violinist of the Beo String Quartet and has dedicated the majority of his career to chamber music both in performance and in education. While formal violin lessons didn’t happen for him until college, Jason grew up playing music daily with his parents and his brother/Beo violist, Sean Neukom.

Jason's passion for chamber music began while studying with the Ying Quartet at Dakota Chamber Music, a summer festival where he is now faculty. Prior to forming Beo, Jason was the first violinist of the Freya String Quartet from 2009-2015.

An avid supporter of new music, Jason has given over one hundred chamber music world premieres and considers it very important to perform the music of today. In addition to serving on faculty at the Charlotte New Music Festival for ten years, Jason is an experienced studio performer and can be found on dozens of contemporary music recordings.

Jason studied at Minot State University, the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and Carnegie Mellon University School of Music, under the guidance of Dr. Jon Rumney, Piotr Milewski, and Cyrus Forough, respectively. He was awarded fellowships to programs such as the Britten Pears Festival Orchestra, the Opera Theater and Music Festival of Lucca, Italy, the National Repertory Orchestra, the National Orchestral Institute, and has held teaching positions at programs such as the Cincinnati Starling Project and the New York Summer Music Festival. As a soloist, he has made several appearances with orchestra.

Mr. Neukom enjoys performing in orchestra when not on the road with Beo and served as concertmaster for Pittsburgh Festival Opera from 2012 to 2022, currently serves as associate concertmaster of the Westmoreland Symphony Orchestra, acting principal second violin of the Erie Philharmonic, regularly performs with the West Virginia Symphony and Wheeling Symphony, and has performed with other orchestras including the Vancouver Symphony and Sarasota Orchestra. Currently residing in Pittsburgh, Jason maintains an active violin studio and enjoys writing arrangements and working on media projects for Beo.

Andrew Giordano / Violin

A native of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, Andrew Giordano began playing the violin at the age of five. In 2022, he won the violin position with the Pittsburgh-based, forward-looking Beo String Quartet. Before joining Beo, he was a founding member and performed with the award-winning Altius Quartet for nine seasons. As a member of Altius, Andrew won prizes at chamber music competitions and toured internationally in Europe, Asia, and Australia. While in Altius, he also recorded three albums of classical, crossover, and contemporary repertoire.

Andrew holds a Bachelor of Music in violin performance from Indiana University where he studied with Kathleen Winkler, Federico Agostini, and Koichiro Harada. After graduating from Indiana, he went on to complete his Master of Music degree at Southern Methodist University under the tutelage of the late Emanuel Borok. From 2014-2017, Andrew and the Altius Quartet held the position of Fellowship String Quartet-in-Residence at University of Colorado Boulder and were mentored by the Takács Quartet. While at CU Boulder, Andrew also studied privately with Edward Dusinberre, Károly Schranz and Harumi Rhodes of the Takács Quartet.

In addition to performing, Andrew is a passionate teacher. Now in his nineteenth year of teaching, Andrew has taken several graduate-level pedagogy seminars and Suzuki Method teaching courses. Andrew and his wife Nathália Kato have a private teaching studio together, and actively perform as a violin/piano duo under the name “Duo Pragma.” He also coaches chamber music for Youth Chamber Connection (YC 2 ) in Pittsburgh.

Andrew is passionate about enabling kids from underserved communities to study music, regardless of income. He and his wife offer discounted music lessons to students with limited resources. He is also on the board of Boulder MUSE, an El Sistema-type organization in Boulder, Colorado dedicated to providing group music lessons for young musicians who cannot afford to pay for private lessons.

Andrew plays on a 1928 Gaetano Gadda violin, and a bow made by David Samuels.

Sean Neukom / Viola

Composer, instrumentalist, and producer Sean Neukom began his musical journey as a violin student at the age of three. Learning alongside his brother--taught by their father--the foundation was laid for an intense love, respect, and appreciation for music, making music as brothers, and for new music as their composer father would write works to accommodate their level. This love of music took Sean to Minot State University where as a violinist he received a Bachelor in Music degree. While at MSU Sean's musical curiosity led to the start of composition. At MSU, Sean composed for both the concert choir and the string ensemble. The latter for which a spatial work was written that had performers scattered across the room including trumpets in the scaffolds! Following Minot, Sean went on to the Cleveland Institute of Music to earn a Master of Music degree in violin performance.

Sean's mainstay as a performer is as the violist, and as a founding member, of Beo String Quartet. Prior to Beo, Sean played with the Nashville Symphony, the Dunedin Philharmonic in New Zealand, and as principal 2nd violin with the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra.

As a composer, Sean's works cover a wide range of styles. His concert works have been commissioned by organizations such as the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Charlotte-based Fresh Ink new music series, the innovative multi-media music and dance group Cadence Collective out of Milwaukee, the Dayton Philharmonic, the Dayton Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and most recently by the North Dakota Music Teachers National Association. Sean's pop-art works are approached through the same creative means as his concert works, but with the goal of reaching ears both in and out of a concert hall. Some of Sean's most exciting projects have been created for Beo String Quartet. This includes Projection1, a work that was written for three string quartets; but where all three parts are performed by Beo. To achieve this live, Beo plays amplified center stage and on either side of them are pre-recorded projected videos of Beo. The sound is designed to be localized to each quartet which creates a highly unique experience for each audience member. Such a project is just one example of works Sean has been creating for Beo in an effort to create one-of-a-kind chamber music.

Music production has been a passion of Sean's over the past decade. What started as a want to understand the recording process quickly blossomed into a large home-studio operation. Now with over 60 recording projects and 9 albums under his belt, Sean is the artistic director for NeuKraft Records, Beo String Quartet's own label. With an ambitious release schedule, NeuKraft Records aims to curate a specialized series of classical concept albums at the center of which lies a unique marriage of chamber music and storytelling not tied by the bounds of genre.

Ryan Ash / Cello

Ryan Ash, cellist, earned his Bachelor of Music degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, studying cello with Brandon Vamos (of the twice Grammy-winning Pacifica Quartet) and piano with Dr. Yu-Chi Tai, and his Master of Music degree at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University with Dr. Tanya Carey, former president of the SAA and with whom he continued long-term teacher training for four additional years. Ryan also counts Dr. Louis Bergonzi and Dr. Karen Hendricks (cello), Caroline Fraser (piano), and Melanie Ron (early childhood music) among his teaching mentors. He has performed in masterclasses for Steven Doane, Richard Aaron, David Halen, Amit Peled, John Sharp, Wendy Warner, the Arianna, Biava, and Shanghai String Quartets.

Before relocating to Pittsburgh, Ryan performed frequently as a member of the Sinfonia da Camera, the Champaign-Urbana, Eastern Illinois, and Decatur Symphony Orchestras. His performance of Gian Carlo Menotti’s Trio for Two Cellos and Piano was also featured on Chicago’s classical radio station 98.7 WFMT. Ryan has since performed chamber music on the Holy Trinity Concert Series, OvreArts, Music on the Edge, Pittsburgh Concert Society, and also appeared with Resonance Works, Living Room Chamber Music Project, and the Westmoreland, Butler County, Huntington, Ohio Valley, Youngstown, and Pittsburgh Festival Opera orchestras.

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