Sunday Afternoon Live presents Medusa Quartet
Published 1:30 am Monday, April 6, 2026
Musicians are rare people. They are folks who think “in music,” whose responses to life include creating sounds and songs. Medusa Quartet is an ensemble of musicians who have answered the world’s tendency to bury the different and the divergent by unearthing lost objects and lifting up the forgotten and the disdained. They have turned those lost things into beauty and music.
Sunday Afternoon Live will present Medusa Quartet on the stage of the historic Raymond Theatre on Sunday, April 12 at 2 p.m., and what a singular experience this concert will be. Medusa Quartet, recognized by the Canadian Folk Music Awards for their debut album Medusa, will be sharing music performed on ancient, once-lost stringed instruments rarely seen outside of museums. These are instruments with names like knee-fiddle, nyckelharpa, suka and plock fiddle. They look different and are played differently, but they weave their magic beautifully alongside the more familiar fiddle, viola and cello. Together they conjure haunting melodies from Ireland, Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean, Appalachia and Scandinavia.
The performers known as Medusa Quartet — Saskia Tomkins, Geo Hathaway, Marta Solek and Lea Kirstein — are music historians, songwriters, educators and multi-instrumentalists. Their work collectively and individually has taken them from their home base in Toronto to stages on the East and West coasts of the U.S., and Europe. Each of them has worked to provide “inspiration for anyone who has been denied their true self.” By performing astonishing works with instruments that were long buried, even disdained, they show how one’s true self, with a little encouragement, can shine.
One might ask how Medusa Quartet took on a name that invokes the dreadful Gorgon of Greek mythology. As their official website puts it, these artists are “wielding a sound that would turn classical music scholars to stone. … Medusa tempts us to redefine what is beautiful.”
Medusa Quartet will perform at the historic Raymond Theatre, 323 3rd St., Raymond, on Sunday, April 12, at 2 p.m. Tickets are $25 ($5 for students) at the door (credit card, cash or check). Advance purchase is $20 ($5 for students) online at sundayafternoonlive.org or by mail. Send a SASE and a check payable to Sunday Afternoon Live to: SAL, PO Box 964, South Bend, WA 98586; or you may email sal@reachone.com, or call 360-836-4419. Tickets may also be purchased at South Bend Pharmacy and at Raymond Pharmacy, or at Alder + Co. in Raymond.
