Dakota String Quartet

The Dakota String Quartet is the resident string quartet of the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra. In addition to regular concert performances, the group maintains substantial outreach efforts at colleges, community centers, public schools, and the like. The Dakota String Quartet was formed in 1978. It is composed of section principals of the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, so it has had many different members over the years. As of 2021, its members are first violinist Doosook Kim, a native of Korea who divides her time between South Dakota and Korea and has been a member of the Orchestre des Régions Européennes; Polish-born second violinist Magdalena Modzelewska, who teaches at South Dakota's Augustana University and also performs in a Celtic band and in the music-and-storytelling combination Flower and Flame; violist Yi-Chun Lin, a Taipei, Taiwan native who has performed concertos with the Texas Music Festival Orchestra, the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, and the Akademische Orchester at the Gewandhaus concert hall in Leipzig; and cellist Robert Erhard, who joined the quartet in 2020 after completing a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he studied with Judith Glyde and Thomas Heinrich, and a Master of Music from Eastman School of Music. The Dakota String Quartet offers concerts and workshops across five states. The group mostly spends its time on tour, performing not only in concert halls but in a large variety of outreach situations that include school music programs from the elementary school level to college, including master classes, clinics, preparation for school sectional contests, side-by-side rehearsals, music educator clinics, and retirement community visits. In 2020, the group participated in the Stained Glass Concerts series at the First Congregational Church in the city of Sioux Falls. (The orchestra also maintains a Dakota Wind Quintet serving similar functions.) In 2021, the Dakota String Quartet made its recording debut, appearing on the album Arthur Farwell: America's Neglected Composer, under the auspices of the orchestra's Lakota Music Project. The quartet performed Farwell's String Quartet, Op. 65 ("The Hako").
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