The Telegraph Quartet (Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violins; Pei-Ling Lin, viola; Jeremiah Shaw, cello) formed in 2013 with an equal passion for the standard chamber music repertoire and contemporary, non-standard works alike. Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “…an incredibly valuable addition to the cultural landscape” and “powerfully adept… with a combination of brilliance and subtlety,” the Telegraph Quartet is a previous recipient of the prestigious Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the Grand Prize at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition.

The Quartet is currently the Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Michigan. They have performed in concert halls, music festivals, and academic institutions across the United States and abroad, including New York City’s Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and Town Hall, San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Chamber Music Tuesdays, Philharmonie de Paris, and at festivals including the Chautauqua Institute, Music in the Vineyards in Napa Valley, Interlochen Arts Festival, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, and the Emilia Romagna Festival. Prior to their residency at the University of Michigan, the Telegraph was the Quartet-in-Residence at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music between 2017-2024.

Notable collaborations include projects with pianists Leon Fleisher and Simone Dinnerstein; vocalist Theo Bleckmann; composer and pianist Stephen Prutsman; cellists Norman Fischer and Bonnie Hampton; violinist Ian Swensen; and the St. Lawrence Quartet and Henschel Quartett. During the 2026-27 season, Telegraph will perform with acclaimed pianist Awadagin Pratt.

A fervent champion of 20th- and 21st-century repertoire, the Telegraph Quartet co-commissioned John Harbison’s String Quartet No. 6 and gave its West Coast premiere in the fall of 2017 on San Francisco State University’s Morrison Artists Series. The Telegraph Quartet premiered Richard Festinger’s third string quartet, Icarus in Flight, a musical representation of climate change data from the year 1880 to projected simulations of 2080. The Quartet gave the world premiere of Robert Sirota’s String Quartet No. 3, Wave Upon Wave, at Weill Recital Hall for their Carnegie Hall debut in 2018, sponsored by the Naumburg Foundation. In 2022, the Telegraph premiered Robert Sirota’s Contrapassos with soprano Abigail Fischer, featuring libretto by Stevan Cavalier and commissioned by Sierra Chamber Music Society. Also, in 2022, the Telegraph Quartet gave the world premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s octet, Ever Yours, with the St. Lawrence String Quartet. Ever Yours was co-commissioned by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the String Quartet Biennale Amsterdam, and the Clarice Smith Center at the University of Maryland at Columbia.

The Telegraph Quartet is releasing a three-album series of recordings titled 20th Century Vantage Points, on Azica Records. Through this series, the Telegraph Quartet intends to explore string quartets of the 20th century – an era of music that the group has felt especially called to perform since its formation. The first volume, Divergent Paths (2022), features two works that (to the best of the Quartet’s knowledge) have never been recorded on the same album before: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major and Arnold Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 1 in D minor, Op. 7. The New York Times praised the Telegraph’s performance as “full of elegance and pinpoint control,” adding, "in the Schoenberg, they achieve something truly special, meticulously guiding its often wayward progress. At times Schoenberg makes the four strings sound almost orchestral, but the Telegraph players can also make his contrapuntal tangles radiantly clear. Every minute of their account sounds gripping and purposeful." In August 2025, Telegraph released the second volume in the series, Edge of the Storm, which examines the turbulent years of war and its aftermath from 1941-1951 through string quartets by Grażyna Bacewicz, Benjamin Britten, and Mieczysław Weinberg. The series follows the quartet’s debut album, Into The Light (Centaur, 2018), which features a gripping set of works by Leon Kirchner, Anton Webern, and Benjamin Britten. The San Francisco Chronicle praised the album, saying, "Just five years after forming, the Bay Area’s Telegraph Quartet has established itself as an ensemble of serious depth and versatility, and the group’s terrific debut recording only serves to reinforce that judgment." AllMusic acclaimed, “An impressive beginning for an adventurous group, this 2018 release puts the Telegraph Quartet on the map.” In 2026, the Telegraph will release an album of the complete string quartets by composer Kenji Bunch on Phenotypic Records.

Beyond the concert stage, the Telegraph Quartet seeks to spread its music through education and audience engagement. In the fall of 2017, the Quartet traveled to communities and schools in Maine with Yellow Barn’s Music Haul, a mobile performance stage that brings music outside of the concert hall to communities across the U.S. The Quartet has given master classes at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Collegiate and Pre-College Divisions, the University of Maryland, Rice University's Shepherd School of Music, UT Austin's Butler School of Music, Brown University, and abroad at the Taipei National University of the Arts and in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Telegraph has also served as artists-in-residence at Center Stage Strings at the University of Michigan, SoCal Chamber Music Workshop, and Crowden Music Center Chamber Music Workshop. In November 2020, the Telegraph Quartet launched ChamberFEAST!, a chamber music workshop in Taiwan. ChamberFEAST! featured two concerts by the Telegraph at Eslite Concert Hall, a week-long chamber music intensive with students from Taiwanese schools and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and masterclasses and coachings at high schools and universities across Taiwan. In fall 2020, Telegraph launched an online video project called TeleLab, in which the ensemble collectively breaks down the components of a movement from various works for quartet. TeleLab draws the listener deeper into how those components fit together and evolve over the course of the piece while giving the audience the time and space to deepen their experience of music. In the summers of 2022 and 2024, the Telegraph Quartet traveled to Vienna to work with Schoenberg expert Henk Guittart in conjunction with the Arnold Schoenberg Center, researching all of Schoenberg's string quartets.  In fall 2025, the Quartet will host a week-long residency with Henk Guittart about the Second Viennese School for University of Michigan students.

Violinist Eric Chin, a founding member of the recently acclaimed Telegraph Quartet, is equally passionate about performing and teaching. Captivated by chamber music, he founded the award- winning Nexus String Quartet in 2007 at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. After the final season of the Nexus String Quartet, Mr. Chin received invitation to join the Hausmann Quartet and the chamber music and string faculty at San Diego State University, and held that position until 2014. He then decided to move back to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he later co- founded the Telegraph Quartet.

Mr. Chin’s concert tours as a soloist, chamber musician, and concertmaster have taken him performing throughout Europe as well as in Asia, Canada, and the United States. He has appeared on faculty at festivals such as the Capistrano International Chamber Music Festival, LyricaFest, and Chamber Music Connection Ohio, and was invited abroad to give concerts and masterclasses at the top art universities in Taiwan, including the National Taiwan University of Arts, Tunghai University, National Pingtung University of Education, Wenzao Ursuline College, and Taiwan Normal University. Mr. Chin has also appeared as performing artist at the Great Lakes Music Festival and at Music Mountain.

As a chamber musician, Mr. Chin has performed with some of the most sought after musicians of our time, including members of the Juilliard, Concord, Meliora, Miami, Takács, and Alexander string quartets.

Mr. Chin currently maintains a committed teaching studio in the San Jose and San Francisco Bay area.

Native-Taiwanese violist Pei-Ling Lin is a dedicated chamber musician and teacher. Her passion in chamber music and education has brought her to major concert halls and festivals across the nation and abroad.

As a co-founder of the Bay-Area Telegraph Quartet, Ms. Lin was the winner of both the Senior String Division Gold Medal and the Grand Prize at the 2014 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, just this past May. During the 2013/14 season she made appearances with the Left Coast Ensemble, San Francisco Symphony, Zivian-Tomkins Duo and Bonnie Hampton. Ms. Lin spent the summer of 2014 with the Telegraph Quartet at the Great Lakes Festival in Detroit and at the prestigious Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont. Past appearances have included performances with such artists as Donald Weilerstein, Roger Tapping and Norman Fischer, as well as the Mendelssohn Octet with Cho-Liang Lin, James Dunham and Lynn Harrell. Recently, Ms. Lin has had the opportunity to work and perform with renowned artists such as Robert Mann, Kim Kashkashian, Ian Swensen, Joseph Swensen, Joseph Lin, and Paul Katz.

Ms. Lin was associate principal violist of South Dakota Symphony Orchestra’s 2009-2010 season, a member of Augustana Faculty string quartet and viola faculty at Augustana College. The quartet traveled and taught in more than 10 high schools throughout the region of South Dakota and Iowa. For both summers of 2012 and 2013 Ms. Lin taught viola and coached chamber music at the Yellow Barn Music Festival’s Young Artist Program. In the spring of 2014 she served as a guest chamber coach of the collegiate division at San Francisco Coservatory of Music . Ms. Lin is currently on the viola faculty of the Pre-College Program at San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Ms. Lin attended The Juilliard School for her Bachelors of Music and studied under Hsin-Yun Huang. She holds a Masters of Music from Rice University where she studied with Mr. James Dunham of the Cleveland String Quartet. Ms. Lin also holds an Artist Certicate in Chamber Music from San Francisco Conservatory.

Jeremiah Shaw, cellist, has performed throughout Asia, Europe, and the U.S. with various symphonies, chamber orchestras, and ensembles. In 2013 he founded the acclaimed Telegraph Quartet in San Francisco which won the Grand Prize and Gold Medal at the 2014 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and the 2016 Naumburg Foundation Chamber Music Competition.

As an avid chamber musician, Jeremiah spent multiple summers at Kneisel Hall in Maine, having the privilege of working with members of the most prestigious and influential string quartets of America such as the Audubon, Cleveland, Concord, and Juilliard String Quartets. Past festival performances include, Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in MI, Kneisel Hall in ME, Mainly Mozart Music Festival and Music in the Vineyards in California, Chautauqua Music Festival in NY, Gretna Music Festival in PA, Music at the Gardner and LyricaFest in MA, Steans Institute at Ravinia Music Festival in IL, the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy, and was a member of the cello section of the Sun Valley Summer Symphony in Idaho for over a decade.

Jeremiah is currently faculty at the University of Michigan School of Music Theatre and Dance and has held faculty positions at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, San Diego State University School of Music, Interlochen, The SoCal Chamber Music Workshops in California, Chamber Music Connection in OH, and at Sun Valley Summer Symphony Music Workshops in ID. During his fellowship at New World Symphony in Miami Beach Florida he performed the Shostakovich Cello Concerto no. 1 with conductor Alasdair Neale as winner of the concerto competition. Jeremiah holds performance degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Juilliard School, as well as a bachelor degree in Music Production and Recording Technology from Shenandoah University. He also had the unique opportunity of interning for the Grammy Award Winning classical music label Sono Luminus, while attaining his audio engineering degree. His principal cello teachers were Richard Aaron and Joel Krosnick, but his main inspiration to become a quartet cellist was from his father Clyde Shaw, cellist of the Audubon Quartet.

Violinist Joseph Maile​ has been passionate about chamber music and teaching from very early on in his career and has worked and performed in various ensembles throughout the United States.

As a co-founder of the Telegraph Quartet, Mr. Maile was awarded both the 2014 Fischoff Grand Prize and the prestigious 2016 Naumburg Chamber Music Award and has toured throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia, performing at such venues as Carnegie Hall, Town Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Philharmonie de Paris and the Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna and Eslite Concert Hall in Taiwan. Mr. Maile has also performed with the Left Coast Ensemble, Vocallective, and the Zivian-Tomkins Duo and has collaborated with numerous artists, including Ian Swensen, Bonnie Hampton, Norman Fischer, James Dunham, Leon Fleisher, Menahem Pressler, Gilbert Kalish, Roger Tapping, Donald Weilerstein, the St. Lawrence String Quartet and composers John Adams, John Harbison, and Osvaldo Golijov. An avid teacher, Mr. Maile has served on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music for ten years, teaching violin performance and chamber music at the Pre-College and Collegiate levels. Mr. Maile has also taught and performed at summer festivals such as the Yellow Barn Young Artist Program, Orford Musique, Olympic Music Festival and Center Stage Strings. Mr. Maile currently teaches on the faculty of the University of Michigan as part of the Telegraph Quartet as their Quartet-in-Residence.

Hailing originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, Mr. Maile studied with Itzhak Perlman and Cathy Cho at the Juilliard School and with Kathleen Winker at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. Mr. Maile also received an Artist Certificate degree in Chamber Music Performance studying with Ian Swensen and Mark Sokol at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.