Rasa String Quartet at The Monarch in downtown Ogden feels less like a concert and more like four musicians playing in your living room, if your living room had exposed brick, a bar, and couches. Onstage Ogden presents this rising Boston-based ensemble at The Monarch on Thursday, May 6, 2027 at 7:30 PM for a night that erases the line between folk festival and concert hall.
Rasa is not your standard string quartet. Formed in 2019, this four-piece builds programs that move from Purcell to Celtic reels to rock covers, all threaded together by the storytelling traditions at the heart of folk music. Violinist Maura Shawn Scanlin is a two-time U.S. National Scottish Fiddle Champion and Glenfiddich winner who brings a raw folk edge that most classical ensembles simply cannot touch. If you caught her at The Monarch with Rakish in 2025, you already know what she does to a room.
The quartet has been turning heads fast: international competition wins in Italy and Japan, features on WBUR’s Radio Boston and WGBH, and a residency at Phillips Exeter Academy. The Boston Musical Intelligencer praised their “strikingly tight ensemble” and “consummate cohesiveness.” This is a group building serious momentum, and The Monarch is exactly the kind of venue where you want to hear them before the rooms get bigger.
The Monarch strips away concert-hall stiffness. Grab a drink at the bar, settle into a couch, and let four musicians dissolve genre lines right in front of you in the heart of downtown Ogden. Rasa’s concerts follow narrative arcs that draw from cultures and centuries, from baroque courts to Appalachian porches, with the kind of intimacy this room rewards.
The Rasa String Quartet plays The Monarch in Ogden on Thursday, May 6, 2027 at 7:30 PM.
